"It's not about me, it's what's best for the church," Welby added, days before the gathering of more than 650 global Anglican leaders in Canterbury, England. "I will certainly take advice and if my health is good and people are happy that I'm still there, then I'll still be there."

If Welby remains in office until January 2026, completing about 13 years of service, he will become the longest-serving archbishop of Canterbury in half a century.

But he added that there are now 'complexities associated with gender identity' which a church project about sexuality and relationships is exploring.

The admission, in an official report prepared for the gathering of its governing body this weekend, stirred criticism last night.

It comes despite Anglicanism continuing to oppose same-sex weddings -- and only recently allowing women to be bishops.

The report asks the Church to make amends, indeed to offer 'reparation and redress', for assets it may have accumulated originating from the profits of slavery. Although having to acknowledge that the extent of these holdings is not yet known, it makes much of the investments the Church may have held in pre-1837 slave-owning enterprises. The report has much less to say about the many Anglican clergy at the forefront of the abolitionist cause.

Signed by the Most Rev Justin Welby and the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, the senior leaders, alongside 23 bishops that sit in the House of Lords, criticised the plan for lacking morality.

Writing to the Times, the co-signed letter states: 'Whether or not the first deportation flight leaves Britain today for Rwanda, this policy should shame us as a nation.