The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has emerged from his self-imposed period of silent reflection to declare that he is “utterly sorry” to victims and survivors of child abuse in the Church of England. He feels “a deep sense of personal failure” about not doing enough about the scandals that have so afflicted the Church in recent years.
It is not the first time he has attempted to apologise for his failings, and it may not be the last, but there was, as with his past attempts to exculpate himself, still something deeply unsatisfactory about them. It is, indeed, difficult to know quite what Bishop Welby, as he now is, thought he would achieve by granting an interview to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. His expressions of remorse leave the organisation he so recently headed, with its 85 million “family” across 165 nations, hardly much better placed to face the future.
