The Church of England has appointed a former Barbados High Commissioner to the United Kingdom as the first director of its Racial Justice Unit, following the church’s apology for its role in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Guy Hewitt, a London-born Anglican priest of Barbadian and Indian parentage, will take up the post in November.

“I am humbled by the confidence of those who have chosen me to serve as the inaugural director and look forward to what I plan to be a participatory and inclusive process of restoration," Hewitt said in a statement.

The church established its Racial Justice Unit following the recommendations of the Archbishops’ Anti-Racism Taskforce's report From Lament to Action, released in April 2021. In his new role, Hewitt will work alongside the Archbishops' Commission for Racial Justice to ensure the taskforce’s recommendations and the work of the Commission are implemented.

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The Independent, a U.K. newspaper, reports that Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby issued an apology in June after research uncovered the church’s investment fund contributed “significant amounts” to a the South Sea Company, an organization that supplied African slaves to the Caribbean and South America.

“This abominable trade took men, women and children created in God’s image and stripped them of their dignity and freedom,” Welby said in June, according to the newspaper, when discussing the church’s complicity.

“The fact that some within the Church actively supported and profited from it is a source of shame,” he added. “I am deeply sorry for the links with transatlantic chattel slavery that the Church Commissioners has identified.”