UNITED KINGDOM
Christian Today
Ruth Gledhill CHRISTIAN TODAY CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
21 March
A new group of senior church people, lawyers, academics and politicians has been launched to defend the late Bishop George Bell, who has been accused of being a paedophile.
The George Bell Group has been set up after the Church of England disclosed it had apologised and paid damages following a civil sex abuse claim.
The allegations date from the late 1940s and early 1950s and concern sexual offences against an individual who was at the time a young child.
Bishop Bell, born in 1883 and who died in 1958, became Bishop of Chichester in 1929. He was revered as a leading light on the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church and at one time was even in the running to be Archbishop of Canterbury. He was one of the first to speak out against the Nazi threat before the Second World War.
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