The church suffered acute embarrassment last July after the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he intended to use credit unions to "compete" Wonga out of existence – only for it to emerge that the C of E had indirectly invested thousands of pounds in the company.
The church – which has investments totalling £5.2bn and which prides itself on a strong ethical investment policy that explicitly bans companies involved in payday lending – made the investment in Accel Partners, a US venture capital firm that led Wonga's 2009 fundraising.
Speaking at a meeting of the general synod in London on Monday, James Featherby, the chair of the C of E's ethical investment advisory group (EIAG), said the church commissioners, who control the church's assets, were stuck with the investment for the forseeable future.
Continuing, he had this to say:
"The decision around whether and when to sell Wonga is not one for the EIAG; it's one for the church commissioners and I understand from them that it may be a little while before they are able to dispose of that investment,"
To dispose early might damage other investments because Wonga is held in a pool fund along with a sizeable number of other, much more positive, investments, and one simply can't sell one without the other."
Asked why the embarrassing investment had not come to light earlier, and why Welby had not been better informed, Featherby said there had been a "communication failure" between the church commissioners and Lambeth palace.
"I understand that at a relatively junior level, it was known about but I am afraid that two was not added together with two with the conclusion four, and there was, I understand, a communication failure between the church commissioners and Lambeth palace.
Can we guarantee that this won't happen again? No we can't … I'm afraid it is inevitable about being involved in this kind of world that you do occasionally graze your knee."
However, he said that such hazards could not be allowed to deter the church from putting its money where it was needed.
"The risk of not being on the field of play is that you're not able to invest in some of the areas that, perhaps particularly in the UK, are vital at the moment in terms of investing in infrastructure and new business sectors. We think it's much better to be there; to be trying to influence what happens [rather] than just simply not to be there."
In December last year, Welby said a review of the Wonga investment had determined that the shares were held at "three stages removed", adding that the church was trying to find the best way to get rid of them.
"They are working out how they can dispose of those shares without disposing of millions and millions of pounds of investment at a loss because they have a responsibility to pensioners," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Welby said he had been irritated and embarrassed to learn that the church had a stake in Wonga. "They shouldn't be investing in Wonga; we don't think that's a good thing," he said last July. "What's clear is that … this is an embarrassment. We think that the payday lenders charge vastly excessive amounts for the loans they make, that there is a totally inadequate range of choice for consumers in deprived areas."
