Dear Pat,

In Birmingham diocese this weekend Bernard Longley wrote a pastoral letter to be read in all churches. It is available on the diocecan website. Fundamantally it just expresses shame and sorrow for abuses carried out by the clergy. 26 priests in his diocese have been named. He and Vincent Nicols will be attending to give evidence in London in November.

Why has it taken a civil inquiry to bring them to admit abuses and show (or maybe feign) compunction? Francis has said that he is setting up a policy of zero tolerance for those protecting abusers in the church. Has their silence in the past given tacit approval to those abusers? Or has their silence shown absolute approval? Honourable men would stand aside and admit their failure! The church will not fall apart if the failed prelates move aside. As Francis says he thinks that God is moving the church in a new direction.

Come on now-actions speak loader than words. They need to stand aside and let some good men in. They need to stop paying lip service to safeguarding while riding roughshod over their diocesan safeguarding teams. 

Vincent and Bernard we are watching to see if you are humble, honest and holy or just protecting your own interests??

Just expressing my thoughts. 

Peace

Xxxxxx

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 

Britain's most senior Catholic faces questions over church's handling of child sex abuse claims

 Patrick Sawer

11 NOVEMBER 2018 • 7:00 AM

England's most senior Catholic clergyman faces embarrassment this week when he appears before an inquiry to answer claims he ignored child sex abuse allegations against his priests, including the son of JRR Tolkien.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, is to give evidence in person to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which is investigating how a number of key institutions in Britain handled sex abuse claims.

The hearing will examine the Cardinal’s former Archdiocese of Birmingham, where he served as Archbishop from 2000 to 2009.

It will look into the handling of allegations against Father John Tolkien, the son of JRR Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, who was questioned by police in 2002 over an abuse allegation, but was never charged.

Cardinal Nichols faces claims that senior church officials allowed Fr Tolkien, who died in 2003, to carry on working until around the time Cardinal Nichols took over at the Archdiocese, despite senior officials promising an alleged victim years earlier that he would be forced to retire.

Fr Tolkien had been accused by a Birmingham man, Christopher Carrie, of having twice sexually abused him in November 1956, when he was aged 11.

When, as an adult, he discovered in 1993 that Fr Tolkien was working as a parish priest in Oxfordshire, Mr Carrie reported the alleged abuse to the then Archbishop of Birmingham, Maurice Couve de Murville, who promised that senior officials would investigate.

Archbishop Murville told Mr Carrie that Fr Tolkien was shortly due to retire as a priest.

However Mr Carrie discovered the following year that despite this promise, Fr Tolkien was still actively officiating in church services and continued to do so until at least the mid 1990s.

This prompted him to report his claims to West Midlands Police in September 1994. In February 2002, following a second police investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service ruled that while there was “sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of a conviction”, it was not in the public interest to to bring charges against Fr Tolkien because of his poor state of health.

Mr Carrie then sued the Archdiocese of Birmingham for compensation over the trauma he had suffered at the hands. The case was eventually settled, and he was paid an undisclosed sum.

Cardinal Nichols, who will give evidence on Tuesday, is expected to be questioned about how much he knew about claims against Fr Tolkien and other clergymen and what he did about the apparent lack of action by senior clergy within the Archdiocese.

Speaking about Fr Tolkien in October 2003, Cardinal Nichols said: “With hindsight he should have been stopped sooner.”

The hearing will also investigate the cases of Fr Samuel Penney and Fr James Robinson, both of whom were convicted and jailed.

Penney, 75, was jailed for seven-and-a-half years in 1993 after he admitted indecently assaulting seven children, while Robinson was jailed for 21 years in 2010 for the sexual abuse of six young boys which began in the Fifties.

Bernard Longley, the current archbishop of Birmingham, will give evidence on Friday.

Christopher Jacobs, of Howe & Co., who along with Slater and Gordon, represents some of the complainants, told a preliminary hearing in September that the Archdiocese was selected due to “the disparate nature of the Catholic Church and its lack of structure, line management or ability to oversee child protection within its ranks”.

The inquiry will examine “the failure of those at the top of the church either to be able or willing to exercise any form of control or even refer allegations made to them directly to the relevant body,” he added..

PAT SAYS:

It's good to see the state authorities in the US and the UK  beginning to conduct inquiries into the RC church and its handling of all the sexual abuse.

The clergy and hierarchy have clearly shown that they do not have the will to conduct these in investigations themselves.

The civil authorities and the police are the ones to investigate independently.

They can hold the RC church to a count using current laws.

And if they need new laws to hold them to a count the various legislators need to bring them in promptly. 

I have always said that the hierarchy will never take the abuse seriously until we bishops in handcuffs being escorted into prisons having been  convicted by a court for covering up abuse.