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The Diocese has produced Australia’s most honest church COVID review, with one dissenting committee member pressing further, calling for a “Truth and Reconciliation Day” and apologies to those coerced against their conscience.

The Sydney Anglican Diocese has become the first major Australian denomination to formally examine its COVID-19 response.

In a 35-page report, which presents a mixed assessment of the Diocese’s response, the diocese also published a pointed critique from one committee member who lamented the denomination’s emphasis on legal compliance over prophetic courage, and its poor treatment of conscience-bound parishioners.

Tabled at the Third Session of the 53rd Sydney Anglican Synod in September 2025, the report examined the denomination’s handling of the pandemic from January 2020 to September 2022.

The report has been welcomed with measured appreciation by voices long critical of Australian church leadership during the COVID era.

Writing for Caldron Pool, Tim Grant — co-author of the Ezekiel Declaration — said the Sydney Diocese deserves to be commended for being willing to scrutinise itself so openly.

“The Sydney Anglican Church should be commended for being willing to scrutinise itself in this way and provide critical reflection on its actions,” he wrote. “I am not aware of any other denomination in Australia willing to reflect in such a deep manner.”

The report is structured in two parts: a joint committee report offering balanced reflections and practical recommendations, and a lengthy individual contribution from one committee member, the Rev Zac Veron of Bayside Anglican Church — the section that has drawn most attention.

A Balanced Joint Report

The joint committee, chaired by the Rev Nigel Fortescue, met 13 times between October 2023 and June 2025. It reviewed more than 1,000 pages of Taskforce minutes, Archbishop correspondence, and parish attendance data, and interviewed Archbishops Glenn Davies and Kanishka Raffel and Bishop Gary Koo.

The report’s overall verdict struck a balance between gratitude for the good-faith efforts of leaders and candid acknowledgment of failures in preparation, pastoral care and gospel proclamation.

The committee commended the early establishment of a COVID-19 Taskforce, the timeliness and gospel focus of the Archbishops’ correspondence, practical support including discounted digital tools and financial relief, and the Diocese’s repeated advocacy with government ministers on restrictions affecting churches.

The report also highlighted the theological contentions of the period. Reformed evangelical Christians sharing the same core convictions reached different conclusions on disputable matters, it said, pointing to the 2024 Diocesan Doctrine Commission report on Church and State and Religious Freedom.

The committee concluded that most COVID decisions fell into the “grey area of ‘may’ rather than ‘must’” and required wisdom and humility rather than categorical resistance.

Candid weaknesses were also noted: the Diocese had no risk management framework and no continuity plan, and regional differences in parishioners’ attitudes to restrictions were not fully appreciated.

The committee proposed a suite of practical reforms — including an Emergency Action Plan with conscience guidelines, healing gatherings, and a new training module at Moore Theological College on “disagreeing well” in crisis conditions.

Veron on Conscience and Coercion

The individual reflection by Rev Zac Veron, a committee member and rector at Bayside Anglican Church, is the document’s most searching section. Running to ten pages, it takes the joint report’s cautious concerns and follows them to their conclusions.

Veron argues the diocesan response was “driven by legal liability, risk minimisation, and a concern not to offend public health authorities.” He contends that the greater risk went largely unacknowledged — “the erosion of trust within our churches, the silencing of differing opinions, and the moral compromise of treating conscience-bound individuals as problems to be managed rather than members of the body of Christ.”

Veron saves his sharpest critique for the treatment of those who objected to COVID-19 injection mandates on the grounds of conscience.

Synod data confirmed that at least 22 lay ministers and volunteers were stood down or encouraged to step aside, and 13 employees and church workers were dismissed, stood down, or resigned. Some faced segregation; Veron cites a pew notice from one diocesan church reserving a section for those who were “TRIPLE VACCINATED AND WEARING MASKS,” even after all government mandates had been lifted.

Veron noted that whole families left churches, and some have not returned since. “There was no evidence presented to the Committee that any of these people subsequently received an apology,” he wrote.

While Veron does not attribute these events to malice, he names the problem plainly: “Sadly, not a few Anglicans were coerced by their spiritual leaders into taking a vaccine against their conscience. Acting against your conscience is always sinful.”

Veron also challenges leaders’ framing of injection uptake as a Christian duty. In hindsight, he argues, that argument “has aged poorly.” He notes that the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) declared in June 2025 that COVID-19 injections are not recommended for healthy children and adolescents without underlying conditions — yet children’s ministry workers were among those stood down for declining the injections during the pandemic.

Citing Matthew 5:23–24, Veron recommends that those 22 individuals “should receive sincere apologies from those who stood them down.”

A Missed Prophetic Moment

On the relationship between church and state, Veron contends the diocesan leadership failed to apply the theological limits on government authority supplied by the Anglican tradition itself.

Drawing on Romans 13, Acts 5:29, and Article 37 of the Thirty-Nine Articles, he argues that the closing of church buildings, the prohibition on congregational singing and the exclusion of unvaccinated believers “were all done with little theological resistance.”

In one case, the Archbishop’s internal COVID-19 Taskforce wrote to NSW Health in October 2020 requesting that mask use in churches be mandated, and “not merely recommended,” Veron explained — “despite a lack of clear medical or biblical rationale.”

“The Diocese appeared to exceed even the government’s requirements,” he added. Veron contends that the Diocesan senior leadership “chose compliance over principle” and departed from the example of the English reformers.

He acknowledges the joint report’s conclusion that decisions fell within the “may obey” category, but presses the missed opportunity:

“By substantially limiting our churches’ ministries for extended periods… our senior leadership unintentionally allowed the “gospel of fear” to overshadow the “gospel of hope”… We missed the opportunity to remind our society that death is not the worst thing that can happen.”

Veron also raises Australia’s post-2022 excess mortality — the highest in more than 80 years, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data — and the growing number of Australians reporting COVID-19 injection injuries.

“There has been an unsettling silence” in the Diocese, he wrote. “No formal mention, no public prayer, and no pastoral lament has been offered.” He urges the Diocese to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15) and, to that end, has proposed a “Truth and Reconciliation Day” be held in 2026.

An Unprecedented Act of Institutional Honesty

Tim Grant, writing in Caldron Pool, noted the personal cost of the process. Witnessing Sydney Anglican ministers publicly criticise the Ezekiel Declaration — the multi-church letter he co-authored opposing vaccine passports in places of worship — Grant said he had been “deeply discouraged” during the COVID years. The report has changed his assessment. “I have been greatly encouraged,” he wrote, praising the Diocese for inviting the kind of critical reflection that “cause[s] the entire Diocese to be confronted with uncomfortable truths.”

The Synod was asked to receive the report and encourage its parishes, rectors, organisations, schools, and Moore Theological College to consider the recommendations. No other major Australian denomination has undertaken a comparable exercise.

The report closes with Veron’s call: “Let us not be driven by fear in the future, but by faith. Let us not outsource moral clarity to government, but recover our prophetic voice.”

The report can be read here.

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