Nichols’ new role puts English Catholicism at ‘heart of Church’

The Archbishop of Westminster has said that serving as a ­cardinal will place English Catholicism at the heart of the universal Church. Pope Francis announced on Sunday that Archbishop Vincent Nichols would receive the red hat – the archbishop’s name was the first non-curial one to be read out by the Pope.

Speaking to members of the Catholic press the day after the announcement, the cardinal-­designate said he embraced this moment “on behalf of the Catholic community in England and Wales”. He explained: “It’s about bringing the gifts of the English experience, the experience in this country of Catholicism into the service of the Holy See.”

The archbishop, who will receive the red hat on 22 February, told The Tablet that the experience English Catholics had of living as a respected minority, and how they had dealt with past adversities, was an important part of the ­contribution.

“I think that living in a society where the cultural assumptions are not Catholic, does teach us a certain sensitivity, a certain robustness and I think enhances the practice of dialogue, which is so much at the heart of making the Gospel present in a modern ­society,” he said.

Archbishop Nichols also pointed to the “multicultural, international character” of Britain. “I think the experience of the Catholic Church in this country is maybe fairly unique in the sense that in this diocese any parish I go to has ­people of 30 to 40 different nationalities,” he said.

“Therefore we live with that Catholic characteristic of our faith very much to the fore. Alongside that we live in a very multi-faith society so relationships here between four or five major religions, and then some of the other smaller religions, is probably a feature that we are engaged in as much as anyone anywhere in the world.”

The archbishop echoed Pope Francis’ letter to the new cardinals that being a cardinal was “not quite caught up with phrases such as ‘princes of the Church’ ”. When it came to the role of a cardinal, he said he thought the Pope did not want “too much fuss and bother. Not too much flamboyancy or all the things that can gather round a public office.” He added: “I think [Pope Francis] sees them unremittingly as an office of service in the Church and he doesn’t want anything to obstruct that priority.”

Archbishop Nichols, who this week was in Glasgow for the annual meeting of the presidents and vice presidents of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, said Pope Francis wanted cardinals to help him in his collaborative style of governing the Church. “He is looking to a collaborative way of working with the cardinals as his primary advisers and with the wider group of bishops around the world,” he said.

The cardinal-designate said it was “quite touching” to find himself in a line of Westminster cardinals. When asked about the almost five-year wait he has had for the red hat, Archbishop Nichols said: “To me, it’s not really been a great issue but I have been very conscious of the expectations of other people and the expectation of history. These things take their time, they take their course,” adding that the timescale had not been remarkable.