Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell. File.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The senior clergyman who is due to take temporary charge of the Church of England faced calls to resign on Monday over his handling of the case of a priest accused of sexual misconduct.

The BBC reported that Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell let a priest remain in his post despite knowing he had been barred by the church from being alone with children and had paid compensation to one of his accusers.

The case occurred when Cottrell was bishop of Chelmsford in eastern England. He is now the second-most senior bishop in the Church of England. He is due to take over next month as the church’s spiritual head from Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who resigned in November over the way he handled separate sexual abuse claims.

Cottrell said in a statement that he had faced a “horrible and intolerable” situation over the priest, David Tudor.

“I suspended David Tudor from office at the first opportunity, when a new victim came forward to the police in 2019,” he said. “Up until 2019, there were no legal grounds to take alternative action.”

Tudor was eventually fired by the church and barred for life from the ministry in October after acknowledging he had sexual relationships with two teenage girls, aged 15 and 16, in the 1980s.

“I am deeply sorry that we were not able to take action earlier, but that was the situation I inherited,” Cottrell said. “It is extremely disappointing that this story is being reported as if it was an abuser being ignored or even protected. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.”

Bishop of Newcastle Helen-Ann Hartley, one of the few bishops to publicly criticize the way the church has handled abuse allegations, said she felt “incredulity” at the latest claims.

She said Cottrell lacked the “credibility or moral authority” to be the church’s figurehead.

“My personal view is that the evidence before us makes it impossible for Stephen Cottrell to be that person in which we have confidence and trust to drive the change that is needed,” she told the BBC.

The archbishop of Canterbury is spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, which has 85 million adherents in 165 countries. It has been riven by sharply divergent views on issues such as gay rights and the place of women in the church.

The latest allegations are likely to add to soul-searching and anger about a lack of accountability at the highest reaches of the church.

Welby resigned last month after an investigation found that he failed to tell police about serial physical and sexual abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps as soon as he became aware of it. An independent investigation concluded that abuse by the late John Smyth could have been stopped sooner if Welby had reported it promptly to authorities.

Welby plans to step down by Jan. 6 — the Feast of the Epiphany — and Cottrell is due to take over until a permanent replacement is selected, a process likely to take months.

The Church of England faced pressure on Wednesday to ensure people are held to account for systematically covering up allegations of abuse, one day after the Archbishop of Canterbury resigned over a church abuse scandal.

Justin Welby quit on Tuesday as spiritual leader of the global Anglican Church, saying he had failed to ensure a proper investigation into allegations of abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps decades ago.

Welby resigned after coming under pressure over a report that found failings in the handling of the case of John Smyth, a barrister who abused at least 115 children and young men before his death.

The report has increased pressure on others to be held accountable for safeguarding failures.

“We … know that some people pretty systematically covered this up and that those people do need to be brought to account,” Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, the second-most senior bishop in the Church of England, told BBC Radio.

Cottrell said there were lessons to be learned from the review, but that he was not referring to bishops.

“The church is a very, very large organisation and a very dispersed organisation. We’re a place where … thousands and thousands of people, anyone can be part of our church, so safeguarding such an organisation is a challenge.”

BISHOP FACES CALLS TO RESIGN

The Bishop of Lincoln, Stephen Conway, who was briefed about the abuse allegations against Smyth in 2013 – the same year as Welby – is facing calls to resign. The BBC quoted an unnamed victim of Smyth as saying that Conway did not do enough when he was informed of the abuse.

Conway apologised on Tuesday for not rigorously pursuing Lambeth Palace, Welby’s office, about the matter, saying he had done all in his authority as a bishop.

The review said Welby was ill-advised about the actions taken in Conway’s then diocese of Ely, adding that he was incorrectly informed that a referral had been made to the police.

“It was my understanding that this matter was reported to the police in Cambridgeshire (in eastern England) and duly passed on to the police in Hampshire where the abuse had occurred,” Conway said.

Asked about Welby’s omissions, Cottrell said: “There have been great steps taken in the safeguarding of the church under his watch, but on this case, perhaps he relied too much on others.”

Welby spent years trying to prevent the global Anglican communion from fracturing, often struggling to please liberals or conservatives as they fought over homosexual rights and women clergy.

But Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba, as the head of Uganda’s Anglican Church had been rebuked by Welby for supporting a strict anti-homosexuality law in Uganda, said on Wednesday that Welby had split the Anglican communion worldwide.

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The Church of England on Monday pledged to boost efforts to compensate for historical ties to slavery after a new report called for funding to be increased tenfold to $1.27 billion.

In January 2023, the funding body of the mother church of global Anglicanism pledged to support communities affected by slavery with a £100 million ($127 million) investment over nine years.

That followed an admission by the Church Commissioners that it was originally funded with investments in an 18th-century company involved in the African slave trade.

On Monday, experts advising the church on the initiative concluded that the financial commitment was “insufficient” for achieving “true justice, reparation and healing”.

It recommended a new target of £1 billion.

“Our hope is that others will join us and invest alongside us and that through our investment, through co-investment from others and through the investment funds growing from returns,” Gareth Mostyn, chief executive and secretary of the Church Commissioners, told a news conference in reaction to the report.

“We hope that the fund will grow hopefully to a billion, and more, and create a lasting positive legacy.”

The Church Commissioners, which manage an investment fund of more than £10 billion to support the activities of the church and clergy, have committed to mobilising the planned £100 million within five years, instead of nine.

The money will finance projects aimed at supporting disadvantaged black communities, as well as entrepreneurs, researchers, doctors, teachers and others.

The church will also encourage other British institutions with histories linked to a slave-trading past to take responsibility.

“We recognise that the Church of England is deeply embedded in the core of the institutions of this country,” said Bishop of Croydon Rosemarie Mallett.

“We recognise that our responsibility, that we’ve taken on intentionally, is to do what we can do, and really hope that by doing what we can do, others will look at us and see that as an example.”

The Church of England has already apologised for its historical connections to slavery, as Britain confronts the legacy of its colonial past.

In 2020, it described the fact that some of its members had “actively profited” from slavery as a “source of shame”.

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