The new pope was selected in 17 days, but the CofE will take more than a year to choose a new leader. It’s utterly humiliating. Compared with Conclave, the process for replacing Justin Welby is like a 16-part re-run of Crossroads

It’s quite the contrast. Pope Leo XIV standing, benign, proud and humble on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Dressed in a white cassock with a bright red shoulder cover and stole decorated with saints and motifs of the Catholic church. The crowd in Vatican City, and tens of millions of television viewers around the world, both elated and comforted by the presence of this man, newly elected by the papal conclave on May 8 2025, 17 days after the death of Pope Francis.

Then hop north, glide over Europe and take a perch by the Albert Embankment where, behind a red brick wall, aged and blackened by traffic pollution, stands Lambeth Palace, the 15th-century official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. And of the incumbent? Situation vacant. Vacant, indeed, since January 6 when the Most Rev Justin Welby laid down his archbishop’s crozier, a sort of mic drop of antiquity, and relinquished his position. After a day that included a lunchtime Eucharist, an Evensong and that contemplative prayerful service of Compline, his 10 years as head of the Church of England ended at midnight.

As I write it is 124 days since that moment, and six months since Welby announced his resignation after claims that he failed to properly investigate sexual abuse allegations against the British lawyer and evangelical Christian John Smyth.

The official established church of England has been rudderless for half a year. So far.

The Catholic church, beset, of course, by its own sex abuse scandals, as well as tensions between traditional and modern values (grappling with the issues of abortion, contraception, homosexuality and the role of women), has a neat and theatrical papal election process. Indeed, so dramatic is the setting, the costumes and the procedure of the election that it proved prime fodder for author Robert Harris in his novel Conclave, and the subsequent Hollywood film adaptation. It must be bewildering for the senior bods in the Catholic church to discover that a Google search of “conclave” brings up not the machinations of cardinals to consider the apostolic successor of Saint Peter, but the blockbuster screen version, now available on Amazon Prime.

The verdict, decided in secret by an all-powerful, all-male clique, is announced to the Church’s 1.4 billion followers quickly and decisively.

Compare this with the Church of England – with some one million regular worshippers and an average of 700,000 who attend weekly Sunday services, whose process for choosing a new Archbishop of Canterbury would, if it was dramatised, be more like a 16-part re-run of Crossroads, buried deep in the early afternoon schedules.

In fact, it’s worse than that. The route towards the final Confirmation of Election ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral is a dirge of a process that would bore even a professional observer of the drying of paint. And it exemplifies so much that is wrong with how our nation is administered, in all its plodding mediocrity. It is the telephone queue to speak to a GP on a Monday morning, the long, painful wait for planning consent – but adorned with vestments and incense.

Now, please steel yourself, because this isn’t easy. You might need a drink before I take you through the procedure – and you’ll definitely be needing one by the end of it. Indeed by the end of the actual process this nation, those of us still alive, will definitely have earned a stiff one.

As with any tweak to a public body in this country, it starts with a consultation. Thus 11,000 people, between February and March, were consulted. There were emails and letters, online forms completed, children and young people consulted and then the Archbishop’s and Prime Minister’s appointment secretaries met over 350 individuals. They spoke with parliamentarians, leaders in public life, representatives from other Christian traditions and those of non-Christian traditions. That’s right, people of no faith and 12-yearolds had their views canvassed. As for all the other people with enough time on their hands to fill in Church of England consultation forms… well, that’s a great deal of coffee and of biscuits. I dread to think of the drag and cost to the National Grid that was involved merely to boil the kettle so that all and sundry could weigh in on the subject.

Once these hundreds of thousands of transcribed conversations were garnered to, in the words of the Church of England, help Wdiscern the gifts, skills and qualities required in the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury to meet the needs of the Church today and in the years to come”, various emerging themes were collated.

This document – let us pray that there is an executive summary – will sit alongside a “Statement of Needs” produced by the Diocese of Canterbury, as well as other information provided by the National Church and Anglican Communion, info that is then submitted to the Canterbury Crown Nominations Commission. This body, explains the CofE, “works prayerfully and collaboratively to discern and nominate the next spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion”.

From them a name emerges, the Prime Minister submits that name to the King who assents to that election (sometime late this year).

So that’s over a year of faff, months of directionless drift, as congregations dwindle.

To deliver us from a morass of sluggish embarrassment, the CofE needs to go full conclave, with electors locked in Lambeth Palace as soon as the archbishopric falls vacant, and an agreement to send up white smoke within 48 hours:

Article Name:The Church of England needs to go full conclave

Publication:The Daily Telegraph – Saturday

Author:“Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum; habemus Archbishop!”

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