Canterbury Archbishop tested for Ebola as he cancels Christmas sermon after returning from Sierra Leone

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby who abandoned his Christmas sermon today has been ‘checked out’ for Ebola after visiting Sierra Leone.

His officials said he was suffering from a ‘heavy cold’.

Dr Welby spent three hours last week in Sierra Leone where he visited children affected by Ebola and delivered a sermon in the capital Freetown.

Lambeth Palace confirmed that Dr Welby has been fully checked out by Public Health England.

His spokeswoman said: “He has been fully checked out. He was suffering for a head cold before going to Sierra Leone. He’s been trying to shake it off for a couple of weeks.”

The spokeswoman stated ‘categorically’ that Archbishop Welby was not suffering from Ebola.

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Dr Welby was due to give his sermon at Canterbury Cathedral, where he was to talk about the centenary of the truce between British and German troops.

He wanted to remind worshippers that while the truce in 1914 provided a brief respite from the war, that the killing resumed shortly afterwards.

Dr Welby was due to tell worshipers that the Christmas message should not be reduced to ‘fictional stories’ of of people ‘swapping photos, shaking hands and sharing chocolate’.

His planned sermon which was put on-line said: “At Christmas 1914, soldiers took the risk, crossed a battleline and kindled an evening of friendship and football.

“It is the moment all have picked on this year, whether in adverts or sermons.

‘The truce illustrates something of the heart of Christmas, whereby God sends his Son, that vulnerable sign of peace, to a weary war-torn world.

“The problem is that the way it is told now it seems to end with a “happy ever after”.

“Of course we like Christmas stories with happy endings: singing carols, swapping photos, shaking hands, sharing chocolate, but the following day the war continued with the same severity.

“Nothing had changed; it was a one-day wonder.

“That is not the world in which we live, truces are rare.”

Last week, Archbishop Welby visited a church-run centre in Tintafor Sierra Leone for children affected by Ebola where he sang with some of the children before delivering his sermon.

Earlier, Archbishop Welby said ‘the deceit and cruelty of governments and rulers as not changed in the 2,000 years since King Herod’.

In a Christmas message released in advance of his planned homily, he said: “2014 has been a year of desperate suffering for many Christians, unparalleled for centuries. Christian communities have been uprooted from the places that they have dwelt since within living memory of the time of Jesus.

“Along with them, others have been harried and hunted, blown up, tortured, beheaded, raped and have seen their families, their livelihoods, their futures destroyed.”

He added that the ‘scourge of Ebola’ was sweeping across three countries in West Africa, while warning that the Mediterranean must not be allowed to become a mass graveyard of refugees risking their lives to get into Europe.