Trust in Church will be 'regained slowly' - Bishop

The Bishop of Oxford says that trust will be "regained very slowly" following recent sexual abuse scandals within the Church of England.

The Right Reverend Dr Steven Croft said there was "much more rigorous training" when it came to safeguarding issues within the Church, compared to a decade ago.

He paid tribute "to hundreds and hundreds of clergy" across the Diocese of Oxford who were "engaged in good safeguarding week in week out".

But the bishop also said he had learned from his own "mistakes" when dealing with serious safeguarding concerns.

Last year the Archbishop of Canterbury quit his role after a review found that he "could and should" have reported a prolific child abuser to police in 2013.

Dr Croft himself previously apologised after a review found that he did not act sufficiently when in 2012 Matthew Ineson told him he had been raped.

During an interview with Adam Ball on BBC Radio Oxford the bishop said: "I've done all I can to learn from that and to behave differently, and also to bring about a change in safeguarding where I have that responsibility."

An independent review last year into the safeguarding work at the Diocese of Oxford praised it as "exceptionally well-led".

He said: "We're absolutely not complacent about that and there's still a huge amount of work to do, and in many ways that's the safest place for us to be as a church, knowing that we have a great deal to learn, and that we can still continue to set the voices of survivors at the heart of all we're doing."

In a wide-ranging one-hour interview the bishop restated his support for same-sex marriage.

"From everything that we've learned from listening to LGBT people there's something profound and deep in their identity, which means that those relationships and loves ought to be affirmed by the church," he explained.

Dr Croft also said he was opposed to the assisted dying bill, saying his stance was "about the sanctity of human life", "to stress the need for good palliative care everywhere" and "partly the sense that we are crossing an important line as a country if this bill is passed".

He added: "For the first time our National Health Service will be proactively involved in ending life not saving life, and that's a really significant thing for the medical and healing professions."

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