Police investigate former Archbishop of York over claims he covered up a paedophile colleague

Lord Hope is suspected of shielding the Very Reverend Robert Waddington, who died in 2007

A former Archbishop of York is under investigation by police over allegations he covered up for a paedophile colleague.

Lord Hope is suspected of shielding the Very Reverend Robert Waddington, who died in 2007.

North Yorkshire police yesterday confirmed it was looking into the Church of England’s ‘handling of allegations of historic child abuse’. Officers said the inquiry is ‘at an early stage’.

Lord Hope, 76, quit his post as a bishop in the Diocese of Bradford shortly after a damning report was published into sex abuse within the Church in 2014.

Judge Sally Cahill’s findings claimed that while serving as Archbishop, he had put children in harm’s way by protecting Waddington from a series of allegations.

The peer was said to have told one suspicious bishop that Waddington – once Dean of Manchester – was too ill to pose any threat to children. But evidence showed that he was trying to groom choirboys at York Minster.

The report said Waddington was a serial paedophile who had attracted complaints since the 1950s. It suggested the suicide in 1989 of a former Carlisle choirboy may have been connected to abuse by Waddington in the 1970s, and it said a complaint laid against him by a cathedral’s organist in 1989 was ignored.

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