Archbishop of Canterbury Resignation Petition Tops 8,500

A petition calling on the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign has passed 8,500 signatures.

The petition stood at 8,557 names when we read it at 21:25 on Tuesday 23 September. Four days earlier it had just crossed 3,000. Its target is 10,000.

It is addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, the House of Bishops and the General Synod. Sarah Mullally is the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, and she was installed at Canterbury Cathedral in March.

The petition is not about the 9/11 award

This is the detail the coverage has skated over, and it is the reason the number matters less than it looks.

The petition is A Call for the Resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was started by Emma Ash, who describes herself as founder and chair of The Inquiry, a group campaigning on safeguarding in the Church of England. The Change.org page records that it was created on 18 December 2025.

That date sits before two others on the Archbishop’s own record. Her own website stated in October 2025 that she “remains Bishop of London until her Confirmation of Election at St Paul’s Cathedral on 28 January 2026, at which she will legally become the Archbishop of Canterbury”. The installation at Canterbury Cathedral followed on 25 March 2026.

So the petition was written while she was still Bishop of London, five weeks before the title it uses became hers, and three months before she came to Canterbury.

Its grounds are safeguarding, not interfaith relations. The text sets out three:

• the handling of the case of a priest in the Diocese of London who took his own life in 2020
• the account of a former member of the London diocesan safeguarding team who says she was harmed after raising concerns, and signed a non-disclosure agreement while working in safeguarding
• a formal complaint made under the Clergy Discipline Measure by a man the Church of England identifies only as Survivor N, about her handling of an abuse allegation as Bishop of London

The Lambeth Award withdrawn last week appears nowhere in that text. It appears in an update, added on 18 September, nine months after the petition was written. The update calls it “a further incident” and asks “what due diligence was undertaken before presenting such an honour”. We reported the withdrawal itself last week, in Archbishop of Canterbury Withdraws Interfaith Award.

Four days, and two American magazines

The petition’s own updates track the surge, and they say plainly what drove it.

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• On the evening of 20 September the petition told supporters “since we shared the petition this weekend, we have reached more than 3,000 signatures”.
• On the morning of 22 September it posted “5,000 Signatures and Making Headlines”, adding that “The Christian Post has also covered the petition”.
• That evening it posted “7,000 Signatures and a News Update”, crediting “a second article published with the US-based Christian publication Charisma”.
• By the evening of 23 September the count on the page read 8,557.

Both publications it credits are American. The outlets carrying the story are mostly the religious press, in the United States and beyond, and the petition itself notes signatures from “the UK and beyond”.

The award list was quietly shortened

One thing has changed on the Archbishop’s own website since last week, and it has not been announced.

We checked the published list of Lambeth Award recipients on the morning of Friday 18 September. It still named Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi as a recipient of the Hubert Walter Award, with no note attached. That was a day after Lambeth Palace said the award had been withdrawn.

Reading the same page on 23 September, the name is gone. The rest of the page is unchanged, and that leaves it contradicting itself:

• the opening paragraph still says the ceremony “saw 27 people presented with a Lambeth Award”
• the full list below it now contains 26 names
• the Hubert Walter Award now shows three recipients rather than four
• the Canterbury Cross still shows 12, so only the one entry has gone

There is no correction note on the page and no second statement. The withdrawal statement of 17 September is unchanged, and still does not say which previous comments led to the decision.

What the Church’s own process has already done

The petition’s third ground has been through the Church’s disciplinary machinery.

The complaint was made under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003. In January the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, determined that it would go no further. His determination, carried word for word by The Living Church and Christian Today, read: “After having very carefully reviewed the matter, I have determined that no further action will be taken in respect of this complaint. Accordingly, I am entirely satisfied that there is no misconduct.”

That is not necessarily the end of it. Section 13(3) of the Measure lets a complainant refer the complaint to the president of tribunals, who may direct the bishop to take a different course if he considers the determination “plainly wrong”.

The Measure itself is on its way out. Legislation.gov.uk records the 2003 Measure as repealed by section 71(1) of the Clergy Conduct Measure 2026, with provisions still to be brought into force.

A second petition, and a much smaller one

A separate Change.org petition, Require bishop Sarah Mullally to resign for safeguarding failures, was started by Fr Paul Williamson on 13 December 2025, five days before the other one.

It had 368 signatures when we read it on 23 September, against a target of 500. It has not moved with the coverage. The “thousands” in the headlines are one petition, not a wave of them.

Canterbury itself has said nothing

Neither of the city’s own Anglican institutions has commented, and neither has moved since we last checked.

• Canterbury Cathedral’s news page carries nothing on the awards, the withdrawal or the petition.
• The Diocese of Canterbury has published nothing on any of it either.

Neither body has any part in the Lambeth Awards, which are the Archbishop’s personal awards and are administered from Lambeth Palace in London.

What it means for you

The office is Canterbury’s. Almost everything in this story happened elsewhere. Both are true at once, and it is worth being precise about which is which.

• She is the diocesan bishop here, and she is not the one you will meet. The diocese’s own page on the Archbishop of Canterbury says the Archbishop is “also the Diocesan Bishop of Canterbury, supported in this ministry by the Bishop of Dover”. The diocese describes the Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin as “the Bishop of Dover and the Bishop in Canterbury”, with “oversight for Canterbury Diocese”.
• Two seats, two jobs. At the installation in March she was seated first on the Cathedral Chair as Diocesan Bishop of the See of Canterbury, and then on the Chair of St Augustine as Primate of All England. The petition is aimed at the second role, but the first would go with it.
• A petition is not a process. Change.org petitions have no standing in Church law. The route that can actually compel anything is the disciplinary one, and its next step here would be a referral under section 13(3).
• Nothing about services, opening hours or the cathedral has changed. If you are visiting, parking in Canterbury covers the city car parks and the park and ride, and Canterbury roadworks and travel has this week’s closures.
• You can read the documents yourself. The petition, its 18 September update and the Lambeth Palace statement are all short, and all are linked above.

We will update this page if Lambeth Palace, the cathedral or the diocese says anything further, or if the petition reaches its target.