By Catherine Pepinster
The biggest challenge facing society is the way it is fragmenting and atomising, according to Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster.
In a wide-ranging interview to mark his recent 80th birthday – and as he comes up to retirement as archbishop – he told the Religion Media Centre’s Roger Bolton that in Britain today “It’s difficult to be explicit and profound about a sense of belonging….We’ve severed some of our mooring lines as to what keeps us steady and what keeps us right”.
Cardinal Nichols, who has been Archbishop of Westminster for 16 years, reached retirement age when he was 75 years old but was asked to stay in post by the late Pope Francis. It is usual for Roman Catholic bishops to not stay on longer than 80 years of age, but his eventual departure is dependent on Pope Leo appointing a successor. Sources in Rome have indicated that an announcement is “very soon”.
During his time as a Catholic priest and latterly an auxiliary bishop, archbishop as well as a cardinal, Nichols recalled he has seen huge changes in Britain, both good and bad. During his interview he spoke out about reforms to the law currently being debated in parliament which he believes reflect the growing focus on individualism and autonomy that is harming society.
Together with his fellow bishops – Nichols is also President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales – the cardinal has been outspoken in his concern about the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, a private members’ bill on assisted dying, which if it became law, would enable a terminally ill adult to be helped to end their life, providing they have a prognosis of less than six months to live and have the mental capacity to make the decision. Having gone through the Commons, it is now under scrutiny by the House of Lords.
“What we need for dying is care, not killing. What we need is a greater input into palliative care, which transforms people’s lives in the last period of their life. But the argument is, no, we all have a right to do what we want when we want. And that undermines the cohesiveness of society”, said Nichols.
He was similarly outspoken about his opposition to a clause in the Crime and Policing Bill which would allow abortions up to birth without criminal prosecution. The Catholic Church has a longstanding opposition to abortion but Nichols said he believed this new bill this could lead to “the increasing isolation of women in a very difficult situation who really need support and help” to have their baby.
However, there were other aspects of contemporary Britain that Nichols was far more optimistic about, such as the way that Catholic churches have seen a revival of people attending Mass since the Covid lockdown – up between 5 and 10 per cent a year, he said. Livestreaming Masses during lockdown had brought benefits, said Nichols, with people coming back to church after experiencing attending livestreamed Mass in their own homes – people who he called “the Covid curious”.
Nichols spoke out during the Covid pandemic about churches being closed completely and was instrumental in having them reopened for private prayer, where people could sit far apart, even if they remained shut for communal worship. He knew how important it was for Catholics to be able to visit their churches, to pray before the reserved Blessed Sacrament – the consecrated host kept in a special receptacle.
The son of a Catholic family, Nicholas was born and raised in Crosby, near Liverpool and educated in Catholic schools before moving to Rome at the age of 18 to study for the priesthood at the prestigious English College seminary. After 14 years as a priest in the Liverpool archdiocese and then nine years running the Bishops’ Conference, he became an auxiliary bishop in Westminster, before being appointed as archbishop of Birmingham in 2000, moving back to London in 2009 as archbishop of Westminster – effectively becoming the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.
By far, the most testing time in his lengthy leadership came with the investigation of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church by the Government-appointed Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. As someone who had led the archdioceses of Birmingham and Westminster, had chaired the Catholic Education Service and one of the Church’s safeguarding bodies, the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults, Nichols was under particular scrutiny.
The 2020 inquiry found that between 1970 and 2015 the Church received more than 3,000 complaints of child sexual abuse against more than 900 individuals connected to the Church. It said that some in the Church had turned a blind eye and failed to act against perpetrators.
Although Cardinal Nichols apologised during the hearings for the Church’s actions, he was nevertheless heavily criticised by IISCA for caring more about the Church than victims, and “did not always exercise the leadership expected of a senior member of the Church, at times preferring to protect the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales and in Rome”. IICSA also concluded that he failed to acknowledge personal responsibility, and lacked compassion towards victims.
But speaking to the RMC, Nichols said that he “never saw any evidence to back up that statement” and that now the Catholic Church was “learning a lot about the trauma of being abused and how long that lasts. We’ve got systems in place that help to create a culture of safeguarding.”
Although Nichols agreed that in the Church, the tendency was to believe what a person under suspicion said, whereas a police officer might disbelieve them, the Church has “had to learn an awful lot about what we’re not best placed to do. We do not investigate things ourselves. We’re not an investigating body. We have legal processes in the church, but we never use those until a civil or criminal process has been complete.”
The other most striking aspect of the Cardinal’s time in office has been the way Catholics have moved right to the centre of public life in Britain, with a state visit from a pope, the Cardinal’s participation in the 2023 Coronation, and the King and Pope Leo XIV praying together in Rome – events which the Cardinal said “are utterly surprising”.
In 2010, when Pope Benedict XVI visited the UK, Nichols recalled seeing that “down the Mall, there were flying side by side, the papal flag and the Union Jack, I never thought I would see that”.
Then in 2023, in sharp contrast to Elizabeth II’s Coronation, when the then papal nuncio (papal ambassador) had to stay outside Westminster Abbey, the nuncio attended Charles III’s Coronation while Nichols himself participated and said a prayer as part of the King’s crowning.
Similarly historic was the King’s visit to Rome in September when he prayed with the Pope in the Sistine Chapel and then was given a special chair and title of “confrater” or brother at the Basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls, a church linked to England before the Reformation.
These various events are, according to Nichols, “just astonishing, frankly, and a great hope, I think, for not just Anglican Catholic relations, but for the role of religion in society. “
“There was an axiom when Pope Benedict came: religion – faith in God – is not a problem to be solved. It’s a resource to be rediscovered and brought to good use.”
View the interview with Cardinal Nichols on our YouTube channel here
