Welby announced Tuesday in a statement, "It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatizing period between 2013 and 2024." 

"I believe that stepping aside is in the best interests of the Church of England, which I dearly love and which I have been honored to serve," he said.

The issue of sexuality has been a controversial one in the Church of England in other ways as well.

Not only is Welby accused of covering up the sexual abuse of boys by a lifelong pedophile, he has also made headlines by rejecting biblical guardrails for human sexuality.

As CBN News recently reported, Welby appeared on "The Rest is Politics," a podcast hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart. During the show, the archbishop said, "All sexual activity should be within a committed relationship … whether it's straight or gay."

Critics argued that the church was abandoning biblical prohibitions against homosexuality by trying to make excuses that unbiblical expressions of sexuality would be ok as long as the participants were committed to each other.

Welby had further stated that the church would bless those couples. "We're not giving up on the idea sex is within marriage or civil partnership or whether marriage is civil or religious and that, therefore, we've put forward a proposal that where people have been through a civil partnership or a same-sex marriage … they should be able to come along to a church and have a service of prayer and blessing for them in their lives together," he said.

However, the official teaching of the Church of England states that "sexual intercourse, as an expression of faithful intimacy, properly belongs within marriage exclusively," classifying marriage as a lifelong union of "one man with one woman."

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