One of the most popular Roman Catholic bishops in the UK has been chosen by the Pope to be the new Archbishop of Birmingham. Bishop Bernard Longley, of the Westminster diocese, is to succeed Archbishop Vincent Nichols in one of the most high-profile episcopal postings in Britain.
Pope Benedict XVI is expected to visit Birmingham when he is in Britain next year. Cardinal John Henry Newman, who is to be beatified next year, founded his Oratory in the city.
Archbishop Nichols, now Archbishop of Westminster, said: “I welcome the news of the appointment of Bishop Bernard Longley as Archbishop of Birmingham. I am confident that he will be warmly welcomed, right across the Archdiocese, in Stoke on Trent, Stafford, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Birmingham, Worcester and Oxford.
“The clergy, religious and laity of the Archdiocese will appreciate the qualities he brings, his gentleness and sensitivity, his firmness and intelligence, his profound and joyful faith, his willingness to listen.
“I am sure, too, that Bishop Bernard will grow to love this fine Archdiocese, just as I did.”
Bishop Longley, 54, who was also one of the favourites to succeed Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor at Westminster, is known for his clubbable wit and geniality. Two years ago however he was criticised for helping organise Masses for homosexuals in Westminster.
Earlier this year, he said that the Church should not condemn those who commit suicide.
Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said: “Bishop Bernard has been an exceptionally good priest and bishop, exhibiting at all times those Christian qualities of kindness and compassion in his ministry. The priests and people of the Archdiocese of Birmingham should rejoice and be glad in welcoming their new Archbishop who will, I know, prove a most generous and caring shepherd.”
Bishop Longley said: “When I heard the news that I had been appointed by the Holy Father to be the Archbishop of Birmingham, I was really very taken aback. It was, as you can imagine, the last thing that I had ever supposed. But really thinking about it, I feel very humbled and enormously honoured.”
He continued: “It won’t be easy to leave the Diocese of Westminster which has been my home for the past seven years. It will be sad to say goodbye.”
His appointment comes as the row over sex abuse in the Catholic Church threatens to blow up again, after accusations against the Church were levelled at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Responding to the charge by the British secularism campaigner Keith Porteous Wood that the Church had been delinquent in preventing the sexual abuse of children by priests, a Holy See diplomat claimed that abuse is a bigger problem in other faiths and in US public schools.
"As the Catholic Church has been busy cleaning its own house, it would be good if other institutions and authorities, where the major part of abuses are reported, could do the same and inform the media about it," said Monsignor Hubertus Megen, a member of the Holy See delegation to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
"Most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant," Monsignor Megen said, quoting from a 2002 article in the Christian Science Monitor. He added that "sexual abuses within the Jewish communities approximate that found among the Protestant clergy."
Quoting the author of a 2004 US Education Department-sponsored study, Monsignor Megen said that the "physical abuse of students in [US public] schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."
Monsignor Megen distinguished between pedophilia and "ephebophilia", which he defined as a "homosexual attraction to adolescent males". He said: "Of all the priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90 per cent belong to this sexual orientation minority, which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the age of 11 and 17 years old," he said.
Papal spokesman Federico Lombardi, head of the Holy See Press Office, confirmed the authenticity of the document but said that the Vatican had chosen not to publish it, in order not to "add gasoline to the fire" on a volatile topic.
Welcoming the attention that the exchange had drawn to his cause, Mr Wood pronounced himself unappeased by the reply. "The complacency exhibited by this supposed rebuttal shows that the problem goes to the most senior level of the church," he said.
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