We act for almost 50 victims and survivors in the Catholic Church investigation at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Over the past two weeks the inquiry has conducted a searching examination of the Church’s performance on safeguarding and support for survivors. The evidence shows that the Church is failing in both respects, and that the much vaunted commitment to a “one Church” approach is more rhetorical than real. These failings have their roots in cultural and structural features of the Catholic Church. However, the attitude and performance of individual church leaders cannot be ignored. 

Since the publication of the Nolan report in 2001, Cardinal Vincent Nichols has been at the centre of the Catholic Church’s response to the abuse scandal. In the inquiry’s report on the Archdiocese of Birmingham, where he previously served as archbishop, he was heavily criticised for his attitude to media challenges of the archdiocese’s actions and for failing to uphold the authority of the national church safeguarding body when it came into conflict with his own archdiocese.