Most Rev Justin Welby, former Archbishop of Canterbury has said part of a report into the way the Church of England handled abuse disclosures against the late Christian barrister John Smyth was “wrong”.

Most Rev Welby resigned last November shortly after the Makin Review found serious failings in the Church’s response to abuse allegations. The report stated that the Church should have reported Smyth to the police in the UK and to authorities in South Africa earlier.  The then archbishop had first been made aware of an allegation against Smyth in 2013, but he said he had been assured the matter was being reported to police.  He said he hadn’t realised the full extent of the abuse until four years later.

Speaking to the Cambridge Union last month, he said reviewer Keith Makin hadn’t seen evidence that came out after his report which was correspondence from Lambeth Palace and the Bishop of Ely to South Africa where Smyth was living at the time.

The recording of the discussion was recently published online. He told students: “The bit of evidence is emails from Lambeth to Ely, and from Ely, letters to South Africa where Smyth was living, and letters to the police in which the reporting was fully given to the police and the police asked the Church not to carry out its own investigations because it would interfere with theirs.”

The Makin Review stated that had the authorities in South Africa been made aware earlier, Smyth could have been brought to justice. He died in 2018 before any action could be taken. Most Rev Welby said that in hindsight he had been “insufficiently persistent and curious to follow up and check and check and check that action was being taken.”

Admitting that his resignation was “one of the loneliest moments I’ve ever had” the former archbishop said he had been seeing a psychotherapist, but that he realised “it’s not really about me. There will be people here who have been abused, who are the victims of abuse, sexual abuse or physical abuse, emotional abuse. And I have been very open that I am one of them. So I am aware of what it means.”