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Justin Welby recording his Easter Sunday sermon in the kitchen of his flat at Lambeth Palace in London.
Justin Welby recording his Easter Sunday sermon in the kitchen of his flat at Lambeth Palace in London. Photograph: Caroline Welby/PA
Justin Welby recording his Easter Sunday sermon in the kitchen of his flat at Lambeth Palace in London. Photograph: Caroline Welby/PA

Archbishop of Canterbury secretly volunteering as hospital chaplain

This article is more than 3 years old

Report of Justin Welby’s work at St Thomas’ hospital comes after criticism of C of E response to coronavirus

The archbishop of Canterbury has been making undercover visits to minister to patients at St Thomas’ hospital in central London, it has been reported.

Justin Welby has regularly volunteered as a chaplain at the hospital, which is close to Lambeth Palace, his London home, according to the Daily Telegraph. He has worn PPE over his black clerical shirt and dog collar, the paper said.

“Justin has been a volunteer chaplain at St Thomas’s hospital since lockdown, working alongside other chaplains praying for the sick and dying. Tommy’s is his local hospital so he walks there,” a source close to Welby told the paper.

“He gets a lot of solace from doing it. Just being able to physically see people and pray with them during lockdown – it’s what the clergy has been doing the length and breadth of the country.

“There is some personal risk but he doesn’t really think about that. He just thinks this is what Christians should be doing, helping others.”

St Thomas’ is where Boris Johnson spent a week – including three nights in intensive care – being treated for Covid last month. The Telegraph’s source said Welby started visiting the hospital after the prime minister was discharged, but did not specify when or how many times the archbishop had visited.

Some members of the clergy have been critical of the way church leaders have responded to the crisis. One told the Guardian that Welby had “failed to offer moral leadership to the country at a time when it badly needs reassurance, comfort and a clear message about people’s responsibilities and choices”.

The news about Welby’s volunteering also emerged a few days after an editorial in the Times lambasted the archbishop and the Church of England for a “lacklustre response” to the Covid crisis.

It said: “In a crisis when its flock requires rather more spiritual succour and sustenance than usual … the Church of England has been shockingly absent. In the commercial jargon that the C of E has recently and dismally embraced, a huge gap in the market opened up and it has signally failed to fill it.

“The archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, epitomises the lacklustre response. Since his underwhelming Easter broadcast from his kitchen at Lambeth Palace, our national primate has barely been heard from.”

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