Church’s redemption will not be complete until Bell’s name is restored

‘I have been saddened by the unanimity with which those at the top stuck by their “finding” against him’

‘Before he was killed by the Nazis, Bonhoeffer told Bell: “I feel ashamed when I think of all your goodness”’

‘Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth” it says in the Gospel. There should be joy on Earth, too, as the Archbishop of Canterbury announces he was wrong to say that a “significant cloud” about child abuse hung over George Bell, the most important bishop to support German resistance to Hitler. In six years, Archbishop Welby has moved from unqualified condemnation of the long-dead Bell (October 2015), to admission of unjust process against him but without withdrawal of his accusation (December 2017), to total repentance (yesterday). His original denunciation was shockingly swift.

His realisation of error has been painfully slow. As he more or less acknowledges, it would never have come about without the persistence of Bell’s relations, the George Bell Group, Bell’s biographer, Prof Andrew Chandler, and Lord Carlile, whose report exposed the woeful processes.

But now penitence has come at last, it is full and welcome. It is also brave. Justin Welby is taking personal responsibility for the injustice done to the man he himself describes as “one of the most courageous, distinguished Anglican bishops of the last century”. It is a big admission.

What happens next? How many others with power in the Church will repent? As someone arguing Bell’s innocence from the early days, I have been saddened by the unanimity with which those at the top had stuck by their “finding” against him.

These included not only Martin Warner, the current occupant of Bell’s former see of Chichester, but every single serving bishop.

It also includes the safeguarding team whose unjust methods condemned Bell. By extension, it includes the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, whose proceedings on the subject never considered what the Archbishop calls “the duty of care we owe to those who are accused”. The structure established at great cost to investigate the very real problems of sexual abuse within the Church (and elsewhere) now looks unsafe.

Archbishop Welby announced yesterday that the statue of Bell planned for Canterbury Cathedral (of which he was Dean) will now be erected. Good, but not enough.

After the bogus scandal, George Bell was effaced from all schools, rest-houses etc named after him in his former diocese.

Shortly before the famous German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, he wrote to his friend Bell: “I feel ashamed when I think of all your goodness”.

Those would be the best words to inscribe on the shrine that should now be erected to him in Chichester cathedral.