Former archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said he was “overwhelmed” by the number of child sex abuse allegations he was informed of.
Dr Welby resigned in November after a report revealed he did not adequately follow up on reports about serial abuser John Smyth, who was heavily involved with the Church of England.
The report concluded that Smyth, thought to be the most prolific abuser associated with the Church, might have been brought to justice had Dr Welby formally reported allegations to police in 2013.
In his first interview since his resignation, the former archbishop told the BBC he failed to follow proper procedure because of the sheer scale and size of the problem.
“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 in an interview for this week’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show.
He added: “It was overwhelming, one was trying to prioritise – but I think it’s easy to sound defensive over this.
“The reality is I got it wrong. As archbishop, there are no excuses, being overwhelmed is a reason, it isn’t an excuse.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Dr Welby said “we don’t treat our leaders to be human” and “we expect them to be perfect” when asked about social media and rushing to judge others.
He said: “The first question one hears on most interviews, I heard one yesterday is, ‘are you going to resign?’ and having been the object of that question, it’s a very difficult one to answer, because you think, am I letting people down?
“Is it the right thing to do? You know, it’s a complicated question.
“I think there is a rush to judgment.
“There is this immense, and this goes back half a century, immense distrust for institutions and there’s a point where you need institutions to hold society together and there’s an absence, I’m not talking about safeguarding here, 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.”
The Makin Review, published on November 7 last year, found Smyth had subjected as many as 130 boys and young men to traumatic attacks across five decades in three different countries in the UK and Africa.
The then-archbishop resisted calls to resign for several days after its publication before announcing he was stepping down on November 12, saying he has decided to go “in the best interests of the Church of England, which I dearly love and which I have been honoured to serve”.
On December 5, Dr Welby gave his final speech in the House of Lords saying that while safeguarding in the Church of England was “a completely different picture to the past”, it was “clear” he had to quit.
Critics accused him of making light of serious safeguarding failures in the address after his references to a 14th century beheading drew laughter from the Lords benches and he suggested “if you pity anyone, pity my poor diary secretary” who had seen weeks and months of work “disappear in a puff of a resignation announcement”.
A victim of Smyth said he was “appalled” by the “tone deaf” speech.
Dr Welby apologised the next day, adding: “It did not intend to overlook the experience of survivors, or to make light of the situation – and I am very sorry for having done so.”
Smyth died in 2018 in Cape Town aged 75 while under investigation by Hampshire Police, and so was “never bought to justice for the abuse”, the Makin review said.
The interview will air on BBC 1 with Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday at 9am.
