Who is Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell?
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As Archbishop of York for the past four years, Stephen Cottrell has been the Church of England’s second-in-command. But in less than a fortnight he will take temporary charge, in place of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who is officially stepping down in early January over failures in handling the John Smyth abuse scandal.
Mr Cottrell has acknowledged he is “the person that people will look to” over the coming months as the Church seeks to find a new Archbishop of Canterbury – but has recently faced his own calls to quit over a separate abuse case. Mr Cottrell, in his then-role as bishop of Chelmsford, has been accused of not acting quickly enough over priest David Tudor, who was allowed to remain in post despite having been barred by the Church from being alone with children and having paid compensation to a sexual abuse victim.
The archbishop apologised this month after a BBC investigation, saying he was sorry he was “not able to take action earlier”, but insisted he had inherited a “horrible and intolerable” situation, and “acted immediately” when fresh complaints were made about Tudor in 2019, adding he had “no legal grounds” to suspend him before then.
Appearing to reject calls to resign over the case, Mr Cottrell pledged that he would “do what I can” to bring about independent scrutiny of safeguarding in the Church. He acknowledged earlier this week that things “could have been handled differently” after revelations Tudor was twice reappointed under him while he was serving as bishop of Chelmsford.
