After Welby’s failures, obscurity is perhaps not his to choose

It’s a strange feeling, sitting down with someone who once had huge power and now does not.
The change from before to after can be hard to describe. It’s often in their demeanour, nervous when once they bossed the room. Alone or with one supporter when once they had an entourage carrying their bags or demanding to see the camera shot. Sometimes they’re angry, if they believe they’ve been wronged out of their job; sometimes bristling with ambition, their exit itself a bid for influence.
Justin Welby walked into the room for our interview without the Archbishop’s sumptuous garb. No crucifix, not even a simple dog collar. Just “Bishop Justin” now, with no pulpit to preach from, and perhaps not much to lose.
For more than 10 years he was the leader of the Church of England, the moral guide for a community of more than 80 million worshippers worldwide. His job was one of the most influential and important jobs in our country, stitched into the fabric of our national life, into the Royal Family, Parliament, and small-p politics.
For many of the victims of serial abuser John Smyth, and likely many of you reading this, Welby’s confessed failures are not just mystifying but deeply alarming. He wasn’t “curious” enough to pursue allegations of child abuse in the Church of England. He says now that when he took the job in 2013 he was too “overwhelmed” by the scale of the wider problem to check what had happened with Smyth, a man he had known for years, even though he believed the allegations were probably true.

Courtesy: BBC