Archbishop Vincent Nichols to Be Made a Cardinal. Let This Be a Fresh Start

By Damian Thompson
Thetelegraph UNITED KINGDOM
January 12, 2014

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100254032/archbishop-vincent-nichols-to-be-made-a-cardinal-let-this-be-a-fresh-start/

Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a "blood-crazed ferret". He is on Twitter as HolySmoke. His latest book is The Fix: How addiction is taking over your world. He also writes about classical music for The Spectator.

Pope Francis and soon-to-be Cardinal Nichols.

Nearly five years after becoming Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols is to be made a cardinal by Pope Francis, it was announced this morning. The first thing to say about this news is – congratulations! It must have been a frustrating delay, caused mainly by the fact that Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor retired while he was under 80 and was still an active Vatican functionary. Tradition suggests that an area as small as England and Wales would not have two active cardinals (though, in fact, the situation has never arisen before: Cardinal Cormac was the first Archbishop of Westminster not to die in office).

The second thing to say might best be phrased like this. Archbishop Vincent Nichols has a kept a low profile – to put it mildly – since moving to Westminster, where he has seemed less at ease than he did as an outstandingly successful Archbishop of Birmingham. As a cardinal, his voice will carry extra weight, especially as he has also been appointed to the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops. (As soon as that was announced, a few weeks ago, we knew the red hat was in the bag.) When speaking in public, he has a tendency to fall back on clichés – quite unnecessarily so, since he is an intelligent man. Perhaps he has felt constricted by his voluble predecessor, still one of Rome's great networkers. One cardinal who met Archbishop Nichols for the first time described him as "very hard to read". That's not ideal in an era when, as Pope Francis has demonstrated, plain speaking and personal warmth can move mountains. So my hope is that, as a prince of the church, he will develop a more distinctive message – even if not all of us like what he has to say.