UNITED KINGDOM
Archbishop of Canterbury
Sunday 7th July 2013
General Synod members today voted overwhelmingly to acknowledge and apologise for past safeguarding failures. In the debate, Archbishop Justin called for a culture “that looks first to justice for survivors” and to clarity, transparency and admission of failures. He added this must be done “with survivors, not to them.” Read his full statement below
The statement we heard at the beginning of this debate was, I know, to all of us – as has been said – absolutely agonising. And what it says above all is that, for us, what we’re looking at today is far from enough. We are opening a process, continuing a process in many ways, that will go far further than we can imagine. The reality is that there will always be people who are dangerous who are part of the life of the church. They may be members of the congregation; we hope and pray that they will not be in positions of responsibility, but the odds are from time to time people will somehow conceal sufficiently well. And many here, as the Bishop of Herefordshire said, have been deeply affected, as well as the survivors who have so rightly brought us to this place. Many other people here have been deeply affected and badly treated. So we face a continual challenge and reality. This is not an issue we can deal with; it is something we will live with, and must live in the reality of – day in day out, for as long as the church exists – and seek to get it right.
And so the actions that we are developing must be ones that are persistent. It has been said they must be persistent by bishops. We wholeheartedly agree with that, all of us. We cannot, in twenty years, be finding ourselves having this same debate and saying ‘Well we didn’t quite understand then.’ There has to be a complete change of culture and behavior.
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