VISITING Archbishop of Canterbury Reverend Justin Welby says reparation should not be viewed as a form of compensation for slavery but should be seen as an insufficient act of repentance.

“The use of income from this money is to create social impact funds, to create impact investment for a better future…not to compensate. The sin is too evil; you can’t compensate for sin — but it is a very inadequate gesture of profound repentance,” he said Friday at the Diocese of Jamaica and The Cayman Islands’ 200th anniversary media briefing in Kingston.

Welby explained that after assessing the church’s involvement in transatlantic chattle slavery, how they may have benefited, and its negative impact on West Indian societies, the Church Commissioners for England pledged a total of £100 million towards reparation to facilitate a process of healing, restoration, and reconciliation in relation to descendants of the enslaved ancestors.

“The nature of slavery was [a] terrible genocidal crime committed against people, things done to them, so the use of these money must be done with people and under the advice — not with simply folks from far away doing what they have decided as the best thing to do,” he said.

“We commissioned a forensic audit which, unusually, went back to 1703 and went through, line by line, all the accounts of the church commissioners, or Queens Ann’s Bounty, since that point until emancipation. We, with professional historians at the highest calibre, worked out how much we had made, where it had come from, and our responsibility. And it was out of that, that about a year ago we announced that we were setting up a 100-million-UK-pound permanent investment fund which will be created steadily over the next 10 years from the church’s commission money and will be used for impact investment,” Welby said.When asked about how Jamaicans will benefit from reparation efforts Welby said he believed this will move the country towards a better place as it relates to self-sustainability.

“It’s very early days but it will be aimed at creating possibilities for people through investment — particularly, I suspect, in areas like education which we hope will also produce income for the funds so the funds become self-sustaining. It will also be deployed in West Africa, looking at communities, societies which still bare the scars of those terrible, terrible crimes.”

Archbishop of the West Indies and Bishop of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands Reverend Dr Howard Gregory said that while church commissioners in England will be providing the money, the dispensation of funds will be guided by the oversight committee.

“The commissioners have set aside the money; the commissioners are not dispensing the money as they feel. There is an oversight body which they have appointed of representatives from Caribbean, from West Africa, and people with other skills; they are the ones who are going to determine how the funds should be utilised in the best interest of those who suffered. The commissioners will manage the money in terms of seeing to its growth and its investment but these will determine how it is dispersed to particular causes. So, it is going to be descendants of those who were enslaved who will be making that determination.”

Welby explained that one of the aims of his visits is to gain more understanding of the culture of the people within the region and to better understand the impact the historical genocidal acts would have had on the region.

“I have come ready to learn…and in coming here for the 200th anniversary to a diocese that was set up nine years before the emancipation date — which was not real emancipation as we know — I have come with a sense that I have moved from unconscious ignorance to conscious ignorance, and I hope to diminish the level of ignorance,” he said.