Justin Welby: I failed to act on abuse scandal as scale was ‘overwhelming’

The former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has told the BBC he failed to follow up abuse allegations within the Church of England because the scale of the problem was “absolutely overwhelming”.
In November he became the first Archbishop in more than 1,000 years to quit, after a damning independent review found he did not follow up rigorously enough on reports of John Smyth, a serial abuser of children and young men who was associated with the Church.
In his first interview since resigning, Welby, 68, told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that the sheer scale of the problem was “a reason – not an excuse” for his failure to act after taking the job in 2013.
“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 – and yes I knew Smyth but it was an absolutely overwhelming few weeks,” he said.
“It was overwhelming, one was trying to prioritise – but I think it’s easy to sound defensive over this.

Courtesy: BBC