The Archbishop of Canterbury is to be knighted by King Charles for his ‘personal service’ to the Crown.
The Most Reverend Justin Welby, 67, will be admitted to the Royal Victorian Order in the upcoming New Year Honours List – marking only the second time in recent history that a serving leader of the Church of England has received the honour.
The order is awarded by the sovereign, independent of the Government, to recognise loyal service to the monarchy.
However, Dr Welby’s knighthood is likely to raise eyebrows given his many political interventions, including attacks on the Conservative Party.
He has been a vocal critic of the Government’s migration policy, accusing ministers of ‘sub-contracting’ their responsibilities to asylum seekers through the Rwanda removals plan and claiming it would not stand up to the ‘judgment of God’.
In 2021, he was forced to issue an apology after saying that international leaders’ failure to secure a climate change deal would result in a worse global ‘genocide’ than that committed by the Nazis.
In May, the Archbishop of Canterbury crowned King Charles at Westminster Abbey, and previously married the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in 2018
The Most Reverend Justin Welby , 67, will be admitted to the Royal Victorian Order in the upcoming New Year Honours List
He swiftly admitted that it was ‘never right to make comparisons with the atrocities brought by the Nazis’ and apologised to the Jewish community.
It is a rare and personal honour. The last serving Church leader to receive such recognition from the monarch in recent history was the post-war Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, who had crowned the late Queen Elizabeth in 1953.
It is understood Dr Welby’s honour pertains to his being the first Archbishop of Canterbury to conduct a coronation since then. In May, he crowned King Charles at Westminster Abbey, and previously married the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in 2018.
He became particularly close to Harry and Meghan after giving them pre-marriage counselling.
But he was left embarrassed when the duchess subsequently claimed he had agreed to secretly marry them in a ‘backyard’ wedding three days before their official ceremony at Windsor because they wanted to exchange their vows without the world watching.
Dr Welby was forced to point out that this would not have been a legally binding ceremony and explained that he would have committed a ‘serious criminal offence’ if he had signed their wedding certificate knowing it was false. The Archbishop also christened Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, and took part in Queen Elizabeth’s funeral service.
The King is known to have a ‘soft spot’ for Dr Welby, and the Archbishop features heavily in the BBC’s forthcoming Boxing Day documentary about Charles’s first year on the throne.
The monarch can be seen giggling when the Archbishop forgets the blessing during one Coronation rehearsal.
In another clip, Dr Welby jokes about ‘jamming’ the crown down on the King’s head, saying: ‘I don’t want to break your neck, Sir. It might ruin the service.’
The Royal Victorian Order was created by Queen Victoria in 1896 to enable her to acknowledge and recognise distinguished personal service to the sovereign. Appointments are largely – although not always – made through the New Year and Birthday Honours lists, and recognise a wide variety of service to the Royal Family.
It has five grades of membership, including the two top grades of Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) and Knight Commander (KCVO).
It is not yet known which grade will be bestowed on Dr Welby; this is due to be announced in the new year.
But both entitle the holder to use letters after their name and the title ‘Sir’, although clergy appointed to the higher levels of the Royal Victorian Order do not use the style in day-to-day life. This means it will be some time before Dr Welby calls himself ‘Sir’.
Depending on the grade, knights of the order wear their badge either on a ribbon at the neck or a sash from the right shoulder to the left hip.
The King is known to have a ‘soft spot’ for Dr Welby, and the Archbishop features heavily in the BBC’s forthcoming Boxing Day documentary about Charles’s first year on the throne
All badges are rendered in white enamel with gold edging, but the size of the badge varies by rank, becoming larger the higher you are. All knights – whether a Grand Cross or a Commander – have their crosses surrounded by a star.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment last night, as did a spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury. Dr Welby has been Archbishop of Canterbury since 2013, before which he worked in the oil industry for 11 years.
In 1983, his seven-month-old daughter, Johanna, tragically died in a car crash. He has described her death as a ‘very dark time’ for himself and his wife, Caroline, with whom he has five other children.
But he said that ultimately it ‘brought us closer to God’.
Six years later, he gave up his six-figure executive salary to retrain as an Anglican priest, rising to become Dean of Liverpool in 2007, where he earned a reputation for increasing the size of his congregation, hosting events with the Trades Union Congress and reaching out to asylum seekers within the community.
He was elected Bishop of Durham in 2011 and subsequently joined the parliamentary commission on banking standards. ‘Focusing on profit alone is an ethic of greed,’ he has said.
He received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Durham University in 2015.
Known for his self-deprecating manner, Dr Welby once joked: ‘Let’s be clear, I’m one of the thicker bishops in the Church of England.’
In May 2023, just days after Charles’s coronation, the Archbishop was convicted of speeding after driving at 25mph in a 20mph zone in London, and given three points on his licence and a £150 fine.
It occurred on the same day as his attention-grabbing parliamentary speech protesting against the Government’s Illegal Migration Bill.
Speaking in the House of Lords, he attacked the Bill as ‘isolationist, morally unacceptable, and politically impractical’, and said it risks ‘great damage’ to the UK’s reputation.
Growing up, Dr Welby believed his biological father was the man who raised him, Gavin Welby, who was the son of German Jewish immigrants.
But in 2016, he revealed that DNA testing showed his biological father was in fact Sir Anthony Montague Browne, a private secretary to Sir Winston Churchill.