The Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned less than 24 hours after “losing confidence” of clergy members following a damning report into a prolific child abuser associated with the Church of England.

A petition by several members of the General Synod – the church’s parliament – gathered more than 11,000 signatures urging Justin Welby to stand down over his “failures” to alert authorities about John Smyth QC’s “abhorrent” abuse of children and young men.

Yesterday, a vicar within the church says its leader has “lost the confidence of his clergy” and that “his position is completely untenable”.

One day on and Mr Welby has now resigned.

Speaking shortly after 2pm, he said: "Having sought the gracious permission of His Majesty The King, I have decided to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury.

"The Makin Review has exposed the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth.

“When I was informed in 2013 and told that police had been notified, I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow.

"It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024.

"It is my duty to honour my constitutional and church responsibilities, so exact timings will be decided once a review of necessary obligations has been completed, including those in England and in the Anglican Communion.

"I hope this decision makes clear how seriously the Church of England understands the need for change and our profound commitment to creating a safer church.

"As I step down I do so in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse. The last few days have renewed my long felt and profound sense of shame at the historic safeguarding failures of the Church of England.”

The Makin review into Smyth’s abuse concluded he might have been brought to justice had the Archbishop of Canterbury formally reported it to police a decade ago.

Smyth died aged 75 in Cape Town in 2018 while under investigation by Hampshire Police. It meant he was “never brought to justice for the abuse”, the review said.

Across five decades in three different countries and involving as many as 130 boys and young men in the UK and Africa, Smyth is said to have subjected his victims to traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks, permanently marking their lives.

The Archbishop said he had “no idea or suspicion of this abuse” before 2013, but acknowledged the review had found after its wider exposure that year he had “personally failed to ensure” it was “energetically investigated”.

The Archbishop knew Smyth because of his attendance at Iwerne Christian camps in the 1970s, but the review said there was no evidence that he had “maintained any significant contact” with the barrister in later years.

It said while he knew him and “did have reason to have some concern about him”, this was not the same as suspecting he had committed severe abuses, and concluded it was “not possible to establish” whether the Archbishop knew of the severity of the abuses in the UK before 2013.

The report said Smyth “could and should have been formally reported to the police in the UK, and to authorities in South Africa (church authorities and potentially the police) by church officers, including a diocesan bishop and Justin Welby in 2013″.

It said “had that been done, on the balance of probabilities” Smyth could have been brought to justice “at a much earlier point” than the Hampshire Police investigation in early 2017.

It added: “Opportunities to establish whether he continued to pose an abusive threat in South Africa were missed because of these inactions by senior church officers.”

The Church of England’s lead safeguarding bishop, Dr Joanne Grenfell, previously refused to say whether the Archbishop should resign.

She said she welcomed his apology “personally apologising for what he described as his failures after 2013 to really ensure energetically enough that this was followed through”.