‘A frontier is opening up for us’: Cardinal Nichols at 80
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On Saturday, Nov. 8, Cardinal Vincent Nichols celebrates his 80th birthday, but he looks little different from how he did 16 years ago, when he became the Archbishop of Westminster, head of England’s most prominent diocese.
Apart, that is, from his black-rimmed glasses, which give him a veteran film director look.
Not long after Nichols celebrates his milestone birthday, the Vatican is expected to announce the name of his successor. The next Archbishop of Westminster will assume responsibility for a sprawling archdiocese that covers London north of the Thames and stretches into the county of Hertfordshire. He will also by tradition succeed Nichols as the president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.
Much has changed during Nichols’ tenure at Westminster. When he followed Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor in 2009, the New Atheists like Richard Dawkins were in the ascendant and Catholics were on the backfoot. In his installation homily, Nichols preached about the need for God, highlighted the Church’s role in building community, and stressed the compatibility of faith and reason.
A year later, he welcomed Benedict XVI to London during the German pope’s visit to Britain — an unexpected success that sapped the momentum of aggressive atheism. In 2014, Nichols received the red hat from Pope Francis, who later rarely bestowed the honor on heads of Europe’s customary “cardinalatial sees.”
A low point came in 2019, when the government-commissioned Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse criticised Nichols’ actions in his previous role as Archbishop of Birmingham. In 2020, IICSA issued another highly critical report, focused more broadly on the Catholic Church, prompting calls for Nichols to resign as Archbishop of Westminster.
But Nichols insisted he had no desire to “walk away” from the challenge of reforming safeguarding procedures, remaining in place long after his 75th birthday, when diocesan bishops tender their resignations to the pope.
His endurance allowed him to witness a remarkable change of fortunes for English Catholicism. British media that once pilloried the Church have begun to speak of a Catholic revival, driven especially by young men. The monarchy, once deeply suspicious of Catholicism, has reached out, seeking to heal old Reformation wounds.
The Pillar spoke with the cardinal Nov. 6 about why adult baptisms are rising, the perils facing British society, and what advice he has for the next Archbishop of Westminster.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
In 2025, you’ve had the unforgettable experience of participating in a conclave, witnessing a British monarch and a pope pray together in the Sistine Chapel, and seeing an Englishman, St. John Henry Newman, proclaimed a Doctor of the Church.
Has 2025 been an annus mirabilis for you?
Breathless and astonishing. It’s been something that, in many respects, I never would have dreamt of. To start with the end: St. John Henry Newman. I was present for his beatification. I was present for his canonization. The then-Prince Charles came to that and spoke eloquently about the gifts and the tradition of St. John Henry Newman, insisting on the importance of the spiritual in an age that tends to forget that.
Then, of course, Newman’s declaration as a Doctor of the Church, becoming only the third English person in history to be so declared. The last one, I think, was the Venerable Bede, and that’s some time ago [in 1899].
But then also, the pope declared Newman to be co-patron of Catholic education across the world, with St. Thomas Aquinas. Now that’s a bit breathtaking. We have a quintessentially English man who traveled a difficult journey into the Catholic Church paired up now with the great St. Thomas Aquinas. From a Catholic point of view, this is a huge moment, and I hope it can lead to a lot of renewal in Catholic education.
Over my time, the relationship between the royal family, the monarch of this land, and the Catholic faith has changed quite dramatically. I was just looking back to the visit of John Paul II in 1982. There’s a lovely photograph of him walking along in Buckingham Palace alongside quite a young-looking Queen Elizabeth II. There was clearly a rapport.
So there’s been this personal rapport. But what we saw on King Charles III’s state visit to Rome was that that was moved into a really formal ending of any remaining historical antagonism or suspicion. It was not just a visit, but a visit that included at its heart the act of praying together, of saying “Amen” together.
There was another part of that visit, in St. Paul Outside the Walls, which to me was equally dramatic, because what that did was to reach b
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