Archbishop of Canterbury discovers he's illegitimate son of Winston Churchill's private secretary
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is the most senior figure in the Anglican Communion consisting of some 85million Christians globally.
He is pictured below with the man he had always called dad, Gavin Welby and mum, Jane. He had
always assumed he was a honeymoon baby.
'In the last month I have discovered that my biological father is not whiskey salesman Gavin Welby but, in fact, the late Sir Anthony Montague Browne - who worked for Churchill between 1952 and 1965.
'This comes as a complete surprise,' Welby said in a highly unusual statement issued through the Church of England.
'I know that I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not in genetics, and my identity in him never changes.'Side by side photo of Justin Welby as a schoolboy during his days at Eton, and the man he thought was his father, Gavin, who died when the future Archbishop of Canterbury was just 21.
The Archbishop, pictured side by side with his real dad Anthony Montague-Browne below:
The Telegraph had approached him saying it had found evidence suggesting that Montague Browne was actually his father.
According to the newspaper, the family had long discussed the striking resemblance between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Montague Brown - and Welby himself was aware of the rumours.
He had even met the man who would later turn out to be his father as a child.
The Telegraph then discussed what they had discovered with Welby, who decided to take a DNA test.
A comparison between a swab from his mouth and hair samples from Montague Browne's old hairbrush showed a 99.9779 percent probability that they were father and son.
Welby, who is currently in Zambia for a month-long clergy event, said both his mother Jane and Gavin Welby had been alcoholics, although he stressed that his mother had not touched alcohol for nearly 50 years.
'To find that one's father is other than imagined is not unusual. To be the child of families with great difficulties in relationships, with substance abuse or other matters, is far too normal,' he said in his statement.
'Although there are elements of sadness and even tragedy in my father's (Gavin Welby's) case, this is a story of redemption and hope from a place of tumultuous difficulty and near despair in several lives.'Welby's mother Jane also issued a statement saying the news had come as an 'almost unbelievable shock', admitting to The Telegraph the liaison happened 'fuelled by a large amount of alcohol'.
'It appears that the precautions taken at the time didn't work and my wonderful son was conceived as a result of this liaison,' she added.She said that after leaving her job and getting married, she did not see Sir Anthony again for a long time.
After Gavin and I broke up in 1958 Anthony and I met occasionally but although he may have asked how Justin was, there was nothing that gave me any hint that he might have thought he was Justin's father,' she said.At the time, Sir Anthony was married to his first wife, Noel Arnold-Wallinger, who he would separate from in 1950 on the grounds of adultery. He married his second wife Shelagh Macklin the same year.
Four years ago, it was revealed Welby senior had been a master of reinvention, changing his name and even his date of birth during his lifetime.
He was born Bernard Gavin Weiler in Ruislip, in the West London suburbs, in 1910. The family Anglicised the name four years later, with the outbreak of war.
In 1929, his mother gave him £5 and put him on a ship bound for New York - which is where he began to build his fortune, illegally trading in whiskey during the Prohibition years.
He married his first wife in 1934, a marriage which lasted just a year.
Welby senior returned to London, and a home in Onslow Square, Kensington, in 1950. After a failed attempt at romancing John F Kennedy's sister in about 1952, he met Jane Portal.
They were married by April 1955.
She has described her ex-husband Gavin Welby as 'a very strong, possessive character', adding:
'At the end of March 1955 he was bullying me to leave my job as personal secretary to the Prime Minister and run away with him and marry him in the United States where his divorce was being finalised.
'At the age of 25, as I was, the pressure became too great and in the end I found myself unable to resist.
'One feature of this pressure is that I was already drinking heavily at times. Although I could then ensure that this did not affect my work, it was later to develop into serious alcoholism during the 1960s which only came to an end when I entered rehab in 1968. I have not drunk alcohol since.'Jane split from Gavin Welby in 1958, married Baron Williams of Elvel in 1975.
Gavin Welby died 'as a result of the alcohol and smoking' in 1977 when the Archbishop was 21.
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