Unfinished business Welby’s resignation speaks of deeperissues in the Church

WHEN YOU LOOK AT A HIGH-UP CLERIC someone like Justin Welby, say, dressed in all his finery, vestments trimmed with gold thread and a bejeweled clasp on his cope it's hard to believe this has any connection with a wandering rabbi on the shores of the Sea of Galilee with his band of 12 followers.

- Catherine Pepinster

But Welby and his fellow Church of England prelates take as their guiding light the teachings of that rabbi, Jesus. His words were not all milk and honey. Take, for example, this passage from the gospel of Matthew: "If anyone causes one of these little ones - those who believe in me - to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

In the case of Welby, who resigned as archbishop of Canterbury last week, that millstone turned out to be the Makin review, an independent report that charted the savagery of serial abuser John Smyth. Makin was disturbing in its account of how some people in the C of E knew about what Smyth was up to and covered it up.

It is not the first such organisation to make its own wellbeing rather than the survivors of abuse a priority, nor will it be the last. We've seen it before with schools, for example. Reading the Makin review, I found so much that was familiar from my own reporting on Roman Catholic scandals: the failure to act, not taking children's suffering seriously, making the reputation of the institution a priority, delay in bringing people to justice that leads to other children being exposed to abuse.

Makin was very clear about Welby's own culpability.