THE LEADER OF the Church of England has announced that his father was not who he had thought he was.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is the symbolic head of the Anglican Communion internationally, which takes in the Church of Ireland.
Writing on his website yesterday evening, he said that the information that his real father is Sir Anthony Montague Browne (who served as former British prime minister Winston Churchill’s personal secretary) rather than Gavin Welby had come as a “complete surprise”.
In the statement, Welby says that both his parents had been alcoholics, and his father Gavin Welby had died in 1977 as a result of smoking and alcohol abuse.
“As a result of my parents’ addictions my early life was messy,” he said.
Although I had the blessing and gift of a wonderful education, and was cared for deeply by my grandmother, my mother once she was in recovery, and my father (Gavin Welby) as far as he was able.
His mother Jane Williams has been in recovery from alcoholism since 1968.
Montague Browne served in the RAF during World War II and was Churchill’s private secretary from just after the end of the war up until his death in 1965.
Welby went on to say that his experience was “typical of many people”.
“To find that one’s father is other than imagined is not unusual,” he said.
I know that I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not in genetics, and my identity in him never changes.
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