Rome sends a blast of fresh air into Westminster

The Telegraph ^ | 4/11/09 | William Langley

[Huber]

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

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.

[Huber]

Ping

[big'ol_freeper]

"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."