Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor memoirs 'censored' by church

By Ed Salter And Haroon Siddique
Guardian
May 31, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/01/cardinal-cormac-murphy-oconnor-memoirs-censored-by-church

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor speaking at the Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye last month. Photo by Elinor Williams

The Catholic church has been accused of pressuring one of its senior figures to censor extracts of his memoirs relating to a sexual abuse scandal.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the former leader of the church in England and Wales, is said to have been forced to cut chunks from his new book relating to the crisis in his ministry in which he failed to report a paedophile priest to the police and let him continue working. The clergyman, Michael Hill, was later jailed twice for sexually assaulting young victims.

Among the sections understood to have been cut is one in which Murphy-O’Connor defends the right to protect priests when they have erred. Murphy-O’Connor, while Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, moved Hill to the chaplaincy at Gatwick airport despite being warned he was a danger to young people. The cardinal faced calls to resign over the scandal.

In the published version of An English Spring, the extract about the duty towards fellow clergy is said to have been replaced with a lament about bishops’ failure to prioritise abuse victims over their priests.

Associates of the cardinal, who did not wish to be named, told the Guardian that he had been obliged to censor his work. One said: “A number of us, his friends, were asked to read the typescript in draft. I understand that pressure was put on the cardinal by church authorities to excise sections of the chapter on Michael Hill along with other material in the book.”

The source claimed that Murphy-O’Connor’s official publicist at the church’s headquarters insisted on reading the draft and making cuts. “He [Murphy O’Connor] is a senior prince of the church and he should have just gone ahead and ignored them,” the source said.

When contacted by the Guardian, Murphy-O’Connor’s publicist refused to comment specifically on the allegations of censorship. She said in a statement: “The cardinal’s memoirs are his memoirs. It’s his work and he signed off on it.”

In other sections that were cut, it is understood that he accuses the church of not being prepared to root out systemic paedophilia.

Asked if church officials had applied pressure, Murphy-O’Connor said: “I’d rather not answer that question. Everything I’ve written is what I wanted to write. Any help I got with writing the book was purely personal.”