Rome sends a blast of fresh air into Westminster

Profile: Vincent Nichols, the new Catholic primate of England and Wales, will stir controversy with his robust views
William Langley
11 Apr 2009

The Roman Catholic Church that Vincent Nichols was born into in bombed-out, post-war Liverpool was, by most measures, a reassuringly innocuous organisation, heavily invested in the North and the working classes, and of only polite interest to the people who ran the country.

Young Vincent was 14 when he realised his vocation, and, a few years later, as he set off to study in Rome, might reasonably have expected to spend his life as a priest of good standing but little consequence. What he couldn't have foreseen was that, in his lifetime, the Catholic Church in Britain would be dramatically transformed in size, character and purpose – and that he would be occupying its top job in England and Wales.

With the Church of England seen as having joined the liberal consensus, unwilling to confront the secularism and social experimentation fostered by a decade of New Labour rule, the Catholic Church has taken on an increasingly dominant public role. Around the country, its congregations bulge with Polish bricklayers, African asylum seekers, South American students, Filipino domestics, and growing numbers of Anglican converts. If this diverse new intake has anything in common it is a tendency to conservatism, and in 63-year-old Archbishop Vincent Nichols, appointed earlier this month to succeed Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, it has found a voice. the rest