Welby: I failed to act on abuse as its scale was 'overwhelming'

Justin Welby, the former archbishop of Canterbury, has said his failure to take effective action over a serial sadistic abuser was because he was "overwhelmed" by the scale of the abuse crisis in the Church of England.

- Harriet Sherwood

In his first interview since resigning last November, Welby said: "Every day more cases were coming across the desk that had been in the past, hadn't been dealt with adequately, and this was just - it was another case. It was an absolutely overwhelming few weeks."

This was not an excuse but a reason for his failures, he told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg. "The reality is I got it wrong. As archbishop, there are no excuses."

He also said there was a "rush to judgment" of public leaders.

"There is an absence of forgiveness - we don't treat our leaders as human. We expect them to be perfect. If you want perfect leaders, you won't have any leaders."