LONDON — Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, head of the Church of England and spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, resigned Tuesday after an investigation found he failed to tell police about the serial physical and sexual abuse of a Christian summer camp volunteer. as he became aware of it.

Pressure on Welby has mounted since Thursday, when the archbishop’s refusal to take responsibility for his failure to report abuses in England and Africa in 2013 fueled anger about a lack of accountability at the highest levels of the church. By Tuesday afternoon, Welby had admitted that mistake.

“It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and traumatic period between 2013 and 2024,” Welby said in the statement announcing his resignation. “I believe that stepping aside is in the best interests of the Church of England, which I love dearly and which I have been honored to serve.”

Welby’s resignation will send ripples around the world. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the symbolic head of the Anglican Communion, which has more than 85 million members in 165 countries, including the Episcopal Church in the United States. While each national church has its own leaders, the Archbishop of Canterbury is considered first among equals.

Welby, a former oil executive who left the industry in 1989 to study for the priesthood, was a controversial figure even before the scandal. A skilled mediator who has worked to resolve conflicts in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, he has fought to unite the Anglican Communion, which has been torn by sharply divergent views on issues such as gay rights and the place of women in the church .

The Church of England on Thursday published the results of an independent investigation into the late John Smyth, a prominent lawyer who the report said sexually, psychologically and physically abused about 30 boys and young men in the United Kingdom and 85 in Africa from the 1970s to the ‘ 70. his death in 2018.

The 251-page report by the Makin Review concluded that Welby did not report Smyth to the authorities when he was informed of the abuse in August 2013, shortly after he became Archbishop of Canterbury. Had he done so, Smyth could have been stopped sooner and many victims could have been spared the abuse, the inquest found.

Welby said he did not inform law enforcement agencies about the abuse because he was wrongly told that police were already investigating. Even so, he took responsibility for not ensuring the allegations were pursued as “vigorously” as they should have been.