George Leonard Carey, Baron Carey of Clifton, (born 13 November 1935The Times, 12 November 2009.) is a retired Anglican bishop who was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, having previously been the Bishop of Bath and Wells.
During his time as archbishop the Church of England ordained its first women priests and the debate over attitudes to homosexuality became more prominent, especially at the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops.
In June 2017, Carey resigned from his last formal role in the church after Dame Moira Gibb's independent investigation found he covered up, by failing to pass to police, six out of seven serious sex abuse allegations relating to 17- to 25-year-olds against Bishop Peter Ball a year after Carey became archbishop. The next year the UK Child Sex Abuse Report confirmed Carey had committed serious breaches of duty in wrongly discrediting credible allegations of child sex abuse within the Church and failing to accompany disciplinary action with adding to the church's own safeguarding watchlist. In February 2018 Carey was granted permission to officiate by Steven Croft, the bishop of Oxford, allowing him to preach and preside at churches in the diocese. This was revoked on 17 June 2020 after the Church found Carey could have done more to pass to police allegations of beatings by a barrister John Smyth, who drew his victims from schools and evangelical children's camps. Permission was restored to Carey by the Bishop of Oxford seven months later.
Early life George Carey was born on 13 November 1935 in the East End of London in England. He attended Bonham Road Primary School in Dagenham, then failed his 11-plus. He then attended Bifrons Secondary Modern School in Barking before leaving at the age of 15. He worked for the London Electricity Board as an office boy before starting his National Service at the age of 18 in the Royal Air Force as a wireless operator, during which time he served in Iraq.
Conversion and ordination Carey became a committed Christian at the age of 17 when he attended a church service with some friends. He said "I had a conversion experience which was very real ... There were no blinding lights, simply a quiet conviction I had found something."
During his National Service, Carey decided to seek ordination and after his discharge he studied intensely, gaining six O-levels and three A-levels in 15 months. He studied at King's College London, graduated as a Bachelor of Divinity from the University of London in 1962 with a 2:1 degree, and was subsequently ordained. He later obtained a Master of Theology and a Ph.D. also from University of LondonCrockfords Clerical Directory"Dr Carey spent four years in his first curacy at St Mary's, Islington in North London. He continued to study and was awarded a Master of Theology degree for a thesis on Church, Ministry, Eucharist in the Apostolic Fathers."https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/philosophy-and-religion/protestant-christianity-biographies/george-leonard-carey. Carey is the first Archbishop of Canterbury not to have been an Oxbridge graduate since Simon Sudbury died in office in 1381.
Offices Carey was a curate at St Mary's Islington, worked at Oak Hill Theological College and St John's Theological College, Nottingham and became Vicar of St Nicholas' Church, Durham, in 1975. He later wrote a book on his experiences there called The Church in the Market Place.
In 1981, Carey was appointed Principal of Trinity College, Bristol. He became Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1987; he was consecrated a bishop by Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Southwark Cathedral on 3 December 1987 (by which point his election must have been confirmed) and enthroned in February 1988.Buchanan, Colin. Historical Dictionary of Anglicanism p. 81 (Google Books; accessed 7 May 2014)
When Robert Runcie retired as Archbishop of Canterbury, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, encouraged by her former Parliamentary Private Secretary, Michael Alison MP, put Carey's name forward to the Queen for appointment. The religious correspondent for The Times, Clifford Longley, commented that "Mrs Thatcher's known impatience with theological and moral woolliness ... will have been a factor."John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady (Jonathan Cape, 2003), p. 394.
Carey was confirmed as Archbishop of Canterbury on 27 March 1991 (Accessed 7 May 2014) and enthroned on 19 April 1991.
On 31 October 2002, Carey retired, resigning the See of Canterbury, and the next day was created a life peer as Baron Carey of Clifton, of Clifton in the City and County of Bristol, meaning that he remained a member of the House of Lords, where he sat as a crossbencher. He was succeeded as archbishop by Rowan Williams. Living in the Diocese of Oxford, until 2017 Carey served there as an honorary assistant bishop, as is customary for retired bishops.
Carey was Chancellor of the University of Gloucestershire for seven years, resigning in 2010, and was president of the London School of Theology. He is also an Honorary Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Scriveners and a Distinguished Fellow of the Library of Congress (Washington, DC).
Handling of Peter Ball and other sex abuse allegations During Carey's term as Archbishop of Canterbury, there were multiple complaints of serial sex abuse made against Peter Ball, the Bishop of Lewes and later of Gloucester until his resignation in 1993 after admitting to an act of gross indecency. Archbishop Carey wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Chief Constable of Gloucester police, supporting Ball and saying that he was suffering "excruciating pain and spiritual torment". In October 2015 Ball was sentenced to 32 months imprisonment for misconduct in public office and indecent assault; he admitted the abuse of 18 young men aged 17–25.
Justin Welby, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013, commissioned an independent review by Dame Moira Gibb in February 2016 to deal with the systematic failing of the Church in handling Ball's case.
In a statement submitted by Carey to pre-trial hearings regarding Ball, Carey said: "I was worried that if any other allegations were made it would reignite a police investigation. I was told quite categorically that any past indecency matters would not be taken further." Carey said the senior CPS official told him: "As far as we are concerned he has resigned. He is out of it. We are not going to take anything any further." He has repeatedly asserted that he was not trying to influence the outcome of the investigation.
On 22 October 2016 The Daily Telegraph reported that Carey accepted that he deserved criticism over his support of Peter Ball. Carey had requested that his, rather than the Church's, lawyers should represent him at the government's Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse where Carey had been granted "core participation" status, with the Church of England paying for the lawyers.
Gibb's June 2017 report, "An Abuse of Faith", found that Carey was part of a cover-up that shielded Bishop Ball from prosecution. The review found that Carey had received seven letters from families and individuals following Ball's arrest in 1992, but passed only one (the least disturbing) to the police. Carey did not add Ball to the Church of England's "Lambeth List" which names clergy about whom questions of suitability for ministry have been raised, but provided Ball with funds, and wrote to Ball's brother Bishop Michael Ball in 1993, saying "I believed him to be basically innocent". Graham Sawyer, who survived abuse by Peter Ball, wants the police to investigate Carey's role in the Ball affair.
Following the production of the Abuse of Faith report, with its finding that he had covered up sex abuse allegations against bishop Peter Ball, Carey stated that the report made "deeply uncomfortable reading" and apologised to Ball's victims. Welby asked Carey to step down as an assistant bishop in the Church of England. On 26 June, having spoken to the Bishop of Oxford, Carey resigned from his post as an honorary assistant bishop within the Diocese of Oxford, his last formal role in the church. However, Carey did not resign his orders, nor his seat in the House of Lords.
His resignation automatically revoked his permission to officiate (PTO) (that is, his permission to preach or to minister). He was granted a PTO in the Diocese of Oxford in 2018, conditional on no further concerns coming to light, but this was revoked on 17 June 2020 after new evidence came to light about failures to consider child protection in regard to leading schools' children's activity and Bible camps run by John Smyth in the 1970s. It was then reinstated in January 2021.
On 4 December 2024 Carey submitted his resignation as a priest from the Church of England, writing "I wish to surrender my Permission to Officiate".
In the 2020 BBC documentary about Ball, Exposed: The Church's Darkest Secret, Carey was portrayed in dramatic reconstructions by David Calder.
Theological and social positions
Carey's theological roots are in the Evangelical tradition of the Church of England. He strongly supported the ordination of women but also has close ecumenical links with the Roman Catholic Church, being chosen in 1976 to represent the Church of England at a meeting of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome.
Carey is tolerant of divorce and divorced people and the remarriage of divorced people. One of his sons is divorced and he also supported the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Camilla Parker-Bowles, whose first husband is living. He opposed homosexual relationships among members of the clergy, although he admits to having consecrated two bishops whom he suspected of having same-sex partners. He presided over the Lambeth Conference of 1998 and actively supported the conference's resolution which uncompromisingly rejected all homosexual practice as "incompatible with scripture".Roche Coleman, Connecting the Chasm (WestBow Press, 2013), p. 191
Carey was criticised for his lack of neutrality on the issue of homosexuality by those attempting to reach a compromise position which had been presented to the conference by a working group of bishops on human sexuality. Carey also voted against an expressed condemnation (which had been present in the original form of the resolution) of homophobia. The resolution as a whole prompted one of Carey's fellow primates, Richard Holloway, Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, to declare "I feel gutted, I feel betrayed, but the struggle will go on".
Carey said: "If this conference is known by what we have said about homosexuality, then we will have failed." The resolution, however, was the beginning of an escalating crisis of unity within the Anglican Communion around the question of human sexuality, a crisis that continues. This resolution is at the heart of current divisions within the Anglican Communion on the issue. In 1999 he was one of four English bishops who expressly declined to sign the Cambridge Accord: an attempt to find agreement on affirming certain human rights of homosexuals, notwithstanding differences within the church on the morality of homosexual behaviour. In an interview with Sir David Frost in 2002 he said: "I don't believe in blessing same-sex relationships because frankly I don't know what I'm blessing."
Carey was the first former archbishop of Canterbury to publish his memoirs, in 2004. The book, Know the Truth, mentions meetings with the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles and his thoughts that they should marry. In 2005, they did marry in a civil ceremony; the Church carried out a blessing after civil marriage at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.