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Stephen Pollard

ByStephen Pollard, Stephen Pollard

Opinion

Not fit to lecture anyone

May 8, 2008 24:00
1 min read

There are few public figures who enrage me more than Cormac Murphy O'Connor, who last night lectured us (as he then repeated on the Today programme just now) about attempts to "eliminate the Christian voice" from the public forum.

There is one Christian voice which ought to have been eliminated from the public forum years ago: that of the Cardinal. I refuse to take moral lessons from the man who considered it appropriate to protect and then re-employ a pederast priest, in full knowledge of his behaviour. As the Cardinal's BBC profile puts it: It emerged that he had failed to act when a priest, Fr Michael Hill, became known to him as a paedophile. Instead of informing the police of the allegations against Hill, he moved him to the chaplaincy at Gatwick Airport where he believed the priest would no longer be a danger to children. Far from being a man fit to act as a spiritual or moral guide, Cardinal Murphy O'Connor ought instead to pilloried at every opportunity for his behaviour.