(Photo: Church of England/Geoff Crawford)
Dame Sarah Mullally has used her maiden presidential address to Synod as Archbishop of Canterbury to lament the Church of England’s past failings on safeguarding and double down on raising standards.
The address was delivered to members of General Synod – the Church’s parliamentary body – meeting in London this week.
She said the Church had in the past “fallen tragically short” on safeguarding and that she was “committed to bringing an approach of seriousness and focussed direction to all matters relating to safeguarding in all contexts in the church”.
She said that safeguarding practices in the Church of England must be centred on the experiences of victims and “sharpened by our past failings”.
“This approach must be trauma-informed, put victims and survivors at the heart of all we do and be committed to proper independence,” she said.
She continued, “We must be wholly committed to listening to victims and survivors, to independent scrutiny of our safeguarding practices, and to delivering timely and robust trauma-informed processes.
“We must be willing, always, for light to be shone on our actions and our decisions. We can only begin to rebuild trust and confidence through openness and integrity.”
It was safeguarding failings that toppled her predecessor, Justin Welby, after the Makin Review held him partly responsible for Church failures in responding to abuse perpetrated by the late John Smyth, who ran Christian camps.
The Makin Review concluded that Welby had failed to ensure that Smyth’s abuse was reported to police, and that he could have and should have done more to bring him to justice.
Dame Sarah has in recent weeks come under scrutiny herself over how she handled an abuse case when she was Bishop of London. The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, who was interim head of the Church of England following Welby’s resignation, decided last month that no further action would be taken over the complaint against her.
Survivor N, who made the complaint, criticised the outcome in comments to Premier Christian News in which they said it was a “blatant conflict of interest that Stephen Cottrell should judge a Clergy Discipline Measure complaint when he himself is the subject of a CDM complaint in the very same matter”.
Safeguarding will be considered by Synod in more detail on Wednesday.
Elsewhere in her address, Dame Sarah said she wished to approach her new role as Archbishop of Canterbury with “calm, consistency and compassion”.
She conceded the Church of England and wider Anglican Communion were facing many challenges, but said she was hopeful about reports of people returning to Church.
“There is a visible sign of hope in the anecdotal and statistical evidence that, over the last four years, people have been returning to church,” she said.
“There are early indications of that rise in attendance and participation having continued last year.
“Of course we must be cautious – these are early figures – but the trend is clear. People are returning to Church.
“They are finding welcome, friendship, community, meaning and purpose and we rejoice with God in these green shoots of hope.”
Dame Mullally was Bishop of London before her Confirmation of Election at St Paul’s Cathedral on 28 January when she legally became the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury – and the first ever woman to take on the role.
