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A historical responsibility
Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the Anglican Church, the Christian denomination in force in the United Kingdom, Justin Welby will, on May 6, be responsible for the coronation of King Charles III and the queen consort, his wife Camilla. He will have to preside over a two-hour ceremony, during which he will anoint the king with oil, before giving him the royal attributes: the robe, the orb (a golden globe surmounted by a cross), the scepter and, of course, the crown of Saint Edward. The pressure is such that Justin Welby has even admitted to having made “nightmares”. His bad dream? Forget the crown just before having to put it on the skull of the new monarch.
A first life in black gold
Born in 1956 in London, the man of the Church has a particularly atypical career. A graduate of the University of Cambridge in history and law, he first had a fairly long career in… oil. He spent just over a decade there, including several years in the financial department of Elf Aquitaine in Paris, where he was hired in 1978. The Archbishop of Canterbury still speaks excellent French and has a passion for Normandy. Returning to the United Kingdom five years later to join Enterprise Oil, he left everything in 1989 and began studying theology before being ordained a priest in 1993, then elected Primate of the Church of England in 2013.
A child of sir and jesus
For a long time, Justin Welby believed to be the son of Gavin Welby, who died in 1977 after suffering from alcoholism for years. But, in 2016, the British daily The Telegraph claimed to have proof that the real father of the Archbishop of Canterbury was in fact Sir Anthony Montague Browne, who was diplomatic adviser to Winston Churchill. Her mother had been one of the former prime minister’s secretaries. Welby then took a DNA test, which confirmed the newspaper’s information. “It’s a huge surprise,” he declared, while showing phlegm: “I know I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not genetics, and my identity in him does not change. »
Up-to-date principles
Like all religious denominations in the world, the Anglican Church is confronted with the will, on the part of certain executives and faithful, of a modernization of its principles. The same is true of same-sex marriage, which has divided the institution for years. In February, at the end of a general synod, a sort of great assembly bringing together the hierarchs of the cult, it was decided to bless the couples if not to marry them. It is very moved, the strangled voice and on the verge of tears, that Justin Welby, who supported this provision, announced the news. ” I support [cette proposition]which is the result of extensive work carried out over the past six years and which is based on Scripture, tradition and reason”, he defended.