Welby: Harry and Meghan are serving a life sentence
THE Archbishop of Canterbury has seemingly thrown his weight behind Harry and Meghan, describing their position as ‘life without parole’.
He appeared to draw a striking parallel between Megxit and the abdication of Edward VIII, one of the worst crises to befall the Royal Family in recent history, saying people unrealistically expected royals to be ‘superhuman’.
The remarks by the leader of the Church of England come after he had to deny claims by Meghan that he had secretly married her to Harry three days before their official wedding at Windsor in 2018.
While Buckingham Palace declined to comment last night, the Archbishop’s intervention is unlikely to be welcome, particularly as the Queen – a devout Christian – is head of the Church. She holds the title of Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and sees her Coronation oath to ‘maintain and preserve’ it inviolably as one of her key roles.
It was his role as head of the Church that in part forced Edward VIII to abdicate in 1936, so he could marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson. They became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and later settled in France.
Archbishop Welby enjoys a particularly close relationship with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, according to sources. Not only did he marry them in St George’s Chapel, he christened Meghan – an American divorcee – after the couple’s engagement and provided them with pre-marriage counselling.
He has, the Mail understands, been in regular contact ever since and provided them with pastoral support in private capacity.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times, the Archbishop made clear his sympathy for their predicament, as well as that of other royals, his spokesman later stressed.
The paper wrote: ‘ Welby was recently forced to deny Meghan Markle’s suggestion that he had married her privately to Prince Harry before their televised ceremony. But his sympathy with the prince is clear: “It’s life without parole, isn’t it? If you go back to the 1930s, Edward VIII – he was still a celeb and followed everywhere once he’d abdicated. We expect them to be superhuman.” ’
Last night a Lambeth Palace spokesman insisted that the Archbishop had been speaking generally about the Royal Family.
The spokesman said: ‘The Archbishop was referring to the public attention that has long been paid to the Royal Family and was not commenting on any individual members of the family.’
A source said it would ‘ not be accurate’ to say that he was directly singling the Sussexes out, and stressed he made no direct mention of Harry or Meghan when he used the phrase ‘life without parole’ or when he made a historical comparison.
They said the ‘broader context’ of the comment was that when he retires, Archbishop Welby does not expect to receive the same level of public interest as he does now, whereas this is not the case for members of the Royal Family, as history has shown.
But one royal insider said his remark was likely to be seen as rather tactless, regardless of who he was referring to.
‘The leader of the Church of England saying that being a member of the Royal Family is like life in prison without parole does seem to suggest sympathy with their [the Sussexes’] suggestion that they were living in a gilded cage,’ they said. ‘And if not, it’s tactless to suggest the Queen, who is head of the Church, is effectively behind bars, even if it was meant sympathetically.’
Last month Archbishop Welby denied Meghan’s claim about a secret wedding made in her US TV interview with Oprah Winfrey.
The duchess said: ‘You know, three days before our wedding we got married.’ She said the vows were ‘just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop’.
Archbishop Welby told an Italian newspaper: ‘I had a number of private and pastoral meetings with the duke and duchess before the wedding. The legal wedding was on the Saturday. I signed the wedding certificate, which is a legal document, and I would have committed a serious criminal offence if I signed it knowing it was false.’
In his FT interview, the Archbishop, 65, revealed how he volunteered as a pastor at St Thomas’ Hospital in London during the height of pandemic, comforting the dying who were unable to say goodbye to their families.
He said he had no issue with people saying they felt ‘angry at God’ for Covid-19. He also admitted he got ‘a few things wrong’ at the start of pandemic, failing to push hard enough to keep churches open during the first lockdown. ‘I was too risk averse,’ he said.
‘It’s a tactless suggestion’