1. In February 2018 George Carey was granted permission to officiate by Steven Croft, the bishop of Oxford, allowing him to preach and preside at churches in the diocese.
47 Facts About George Carey
1. 2.
George Carey was born on 13 November 1935 in the East End of London in England.
3.
George Carey attended Bonham Road Primary School in Dagenham, then failed his 11-plus.
4.
George Carey then attended Bifrons Secondary Modern School in Barking before leaving at the age of 15.
5.
George Carey worked for the London Electricity Board as an office boy before starting his National Service at the age of 18 in the Royal Air Force as a wireless operator, during which time he served in Iraq.
6.
George Carey became a committed Christian at the age of 17 when he attended a church service with some friends.
7.
George Carey studied at King's College London, graduated as a Bachelor of Divinity from the University of London in 1962 with a 2:1 degree, and was ordained.
8.
George Carey later obtained a Master of Theology degree and a Ph.
9.
George Carey is the first Archbishop of Canterbury since the Middle Ages not to have been a graduate of either Oxford or Cambridge.
10.
George Carey was a curate at St Mary's Islington, worked at Oak Hill Theological College and St John's Theological College, Nottingham and became Vicar of St Nicholas' Church, Durham, in 1975.
11.
George Carey later wrote a book on his experiences there called The Church in the Market Place.
12.
In 1981, George Carey was appointed Principal of Trinity College, Bristol.
13.
George Carey became Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1987; he was consecrated a bishop by Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Southwark Cathedral on 3 December 1987 and enthroned in February 1988.
14.
George Carey was confirmed as Archbishop of Canterbury on 27 March 1991 and enthroned on 19 April 1991.
15.
On 31 October 2002, George Carey retired, resigning the See of Canterbury, and the next day was created a life peer as Baron George Carey of Clifton, of Clifton in the City and County of Bristol, meaning that he remained a member of the House of Lords, where he sat as a crossbencher.
16.
George Carey was Chancellor of the University of Gloucestershire for seven years, resigning in 2010, and was president of the London School of Theology.
17.
George Carey is an Honorary Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Scriveners and a Distinguished Fellow of the Library of Congress.
18.
Archbishop George Carey wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Chief Constable of Gloucester police, supporting Ball and saying that he was suffering "excruciating pain and spiritual torment".
19.
On 22 October 2016 The Daily Telegraph reported that George Carey accepted that he deserved criticism over his support of Peter Ball.
20.
Gibb's June 2017 report, "An Abuse of Faith", found that George Carey was part of a cover-up that shielded Bishop Ball from prosecution.
21.
The review found that George Carey had received seven letters from families and individuals following Ball's arrest in 1992, but passed only one to the police.
22.
George Carey did not add Ball to the Church of England's "Lambeth List" which names clergy about whom questions of suitability for ministry have been raised, but provided Ball with funds, and wrote to Ball's brother Bishop Michael Ball in 1993, saying "I believed him to be basically innocent".
23.
However, George Carey did not resign his orders, nor his seat in the House of Lords.
24.
George Carey was granted a PTO in the Diocese of Oxford in 2018, conditional on no further concerns coming to light, but this was revoked on 17 June 2020 after new evidence came to light about the failures to consider child protection in regards to leading schools' children's activity and Bible camps run by John Smyth in the 1970s.
25.
On 4 December 2024 George Carey submitted his resignation as a priest from the Church of England, writing "I wish to surrender my Permission to Officiate".
26.
George Carey strongly supported the ordination of women but has close ecumenical links with the Roman Catholic Church, being chosen in 1976 to represent the Church of England at a meeting of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome.
27.
George Carey is tolerant of divorce and divorced people and the remarriage of divorced people.
28.
George Carey opposed homosexual relationships among members of the clergy, although he admits to having consecrated two bishops whom he suspected of having same-sex partners.
29.
George Carey presided over the Lambeth Conference of 1998 and actively supported the conference's resolution which uncompromisingly rejected all homosexual practice as "incompatible with scripture".
30.
George Carey voted against an expressed condemnation of homophobia.
31.
George Carey was the first former archbishop of Canterbury to publish his memoirs, in 2004.
32.
In 1998 George Carey made a public call for the humane treatment of Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile, who was at the time in custody in the United Kingdom.
33.
In 1994, Archbishop George Carey voted in the House of Lords to defeat equality legislation that would have lowered the age of consent for homosexual men, from 21 years, to the same age as for heterosexuals and again, in 1998, he voted against the equalisation of age of consent, at that time 18, to 16.
34.
In late April 2006, George Carey said in a televised interview that the ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, US, in 2003 verged on heresy because Bishop Robinson is gay and lives in a long-term relationship.
35.
George Carey, who remembered the difficulties of the 13th Lambeth Conference that he had presided over in 1998, sought to avoid a major schism in the communion by refraining from further consecrations of gay people.
36.
Andrew Brown, writing in The Guardian, suggested that the effect of the judgment was to say that George Carey was "a self-important and alarmist twit who has no idea what he is talking about".
37.
George Carey criticised the majority of Muslims, who do not support extremists, for not denouncing them.
38.
In September 2006, George Carey backed Pope Benedict XVI in the controversy over his comments on Islam and declared that "there will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths".
39.
In February 2006, George Carey attracted more controversy by declaring in a letter to The Times that a General Synod motion supported by his successor, Rowan Williams, in favour of disinvestment in a company active in the occupied territories of Israel made him ashamed to be an Anglican.
40.
In September 2009, George Carey provoked outrage among some Anglicans by making positive remarks about the arms trade.
41.
George Carey was quickly condemned by a number of Christian activists, particularly since the Lambeth Conferences in 1988 and 1998 had resolved to oppose the arms trade.
42.
In January 2010, George Carey gave an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme in which he said that while any eventual migration policy should not "give preference to any particular group", the points-based immigration system should give preferences to certain prospective migrants based on their values and backgrounds.
43.
In October 2009, George Carey said it was inexcusable that the Vatican gave relatively short notice of its offer to receive some Anglo-Catholics into the Roman Catholic Church within a personal ordinariate, but he nonetheless gave a cautious welcome to the offer.
44.
In February 2012, speaking at the launch of the advocacy group Coalition for Marriage, George Carey voiced his opposition to the government's proposal to legalise same-sex marriage, stating that he was "worried and disappointed" and calling the proposal "cultural vandalism".
45.
In March 2013, George Carey spoke of being "very suspicious" that behind plans for gay marriage "there lurks an aggressive secularist and relativist approach towards an institution that has glued society".
46.
In May 2013, George Carey claimed same-sex marriage could set a "dangerous precedent" which could lead to sibling marriage or polygamy.
47.
George Carey was a leading advocate for the rights of Christians in advance of a case on religious freedom, begun on 4 September 2012 at the European Court of Human Rights, regarding the case of two workers forced out of their jobs over the wearing of crosses as a visible manifestation of their faith.