Lord help the Catholic Church

The Catholic Church is in a hole again. And Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and his press team just can't seem to stop digging, reports Paul Donovan

The Roman Catholic Church is under heavy fire. It has got itself into another mess with the media over accusations about the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and paedophile priests. Now, the spotlight is on those who have been involved in the church's media strategy. They range from a corporate PR man to the ebullient head of BBC Radio 2.

The church views the BBC Today programme as the big enemy. It was the BBC that revealed, two years ago, that Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, while Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, covered up the activities of the paedophile priest Michael Hill. Those revelations are the subject of an ongoing police inquiry. Hill was jailed for five years in 1997, and was freed on parole in 2000. On 22 November this year, he was sentenced again to five years on further charges. It was then that Today came forward, claiming that three other priests had continued in their duties despite serious allegations being made.

The first response came in The Times the next day, in which Cardinal Murphy- O'Connor wrote to again apologise over the Hill affair. He also referred to "the apparently relentless attack by parts of the media on their faith and the Church in which they continue to believe". This line was taken up in a letter to Catholic parishes, in which the cardinal in effect aligned media attacks on him with attacks on the church.

Last week, Today reacted with a new story that seemed to contradict completely the letter to The Times. Jeremy Paxman then followed up on Newsnight by asking the Archbishop of Birmingham, Vincent Nichols, when Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor was going to come forward and speak.

For Catholic media-watchers, the whole PR operation seemed like a repeat performance of what happened the first time the story about the cardinal surfaced, two years ago. Father Kieron Conry, who was then head of the Catholic Media Office, described the day that the story broke as the worst in his seven years in charge. "It went badly and underlined the problem over lines of responsibility. It wasn't quite clear who was managing the issue," said Conry. "The archbishop should have gone on the Today programme, but, in the event, did not speak until the BBC one o'clock news."

After the débâcle, the Catholic Church asked Jim Moir, the head of Radio 2, to conduct a review of the Catholic media operation. An alumnus of Gunnersbury Catholic Grammar School, Moir has vast experience at many levels of broadcasting. The church choosing him, though, does reflect the strange love-hate relationship between the church and the BBC.

As a result of the Moir review, the CMO was closed down with the loss of four jobs, and renamed the Catholic Communications Service. Mark Morley, a PR man who had worked for Weber Shandwick and had advised Susan Kramer in her campaign to be voted London Mayor, was brought in to head up a team of six. Since then, Tim Livesey, a civil servant with a diplomatic background in the Foreign Office and on secondment from Downing Street, has been in charge of the cardinal's office at Archbishop's House. It is Livesey who is handling the media over the latest allegations and heads up an emergency committee that meets every day to discuss the ongoing situation. The committee includes Archbishop Nichols, the Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster George Stack, Andrew Summersgill, the general secretary for the Bishops' Conference, and Mark Morley. Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor himself is not part of the committee.

There are, though, senior Catholics who are less than happy about the way the media operation is being handled. The letter to The Times did not go down well, giving the impression of a man in a hole who is continuing to dig. Inside sources also suggest that Morley's operation at the CCS has been sidelined and that he is being set up to take the blame if it all goes sour. "Information just isn't flowing. The cardinal should have gone up in the media," an insider said. "Morley is being set up to take the wrap for this. It's going to be a communications disaster."

Morley himself seems to be under pressure. Before the present crisis broke, he penned a curious piece in The Catholic Times in which he referred to a variety of elements colliding in "what has been one of the most bruising years of my working life". The bishops, he claimed, "could do more in terms of media relations".

The line being taken, though, is clear. "The Catholic Communications Service and Archbishop's House are working together to deal with this very grave matter. We want to work towards the point where the good steps made on child protection can be applied to best effect," said Morley.

The strategy so far of keeping Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor out of the media spotlight seems only to have driven the pack on in the belief that he is not appearing because he has something to hide. A journalist from one of the Catholic weeklies believes that the explanation for keeping the cardinal in cotton wool could be simpler. "He's hopeless on television," said the journalist. He does, though, question the media strategy so far adopted. "Why, when the allegations were made, did he rattle off a letter to The Times? The Times is not exactly a known home of Catholics. The letter could have been sent to the Catholic press as well, but they just didn't bother. There, they would be reaching at least 350,000 Catholics and reassuring them. There is a need to reassure the Catholic world as well as the world at large about this," said the journalist.

Another journalist who is surprised at the cardinal's media strategy is John Wilkins, editor of the Catholic weekly, The Tablet. "I have done a lot of interviews but it is not my job to be a cheerleader for the cardinal," said Wilkins. The Tablet, though, in common with the rest of the Catholic press, has defended Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor.

For those surrounding the cardinal in the Archbishop's House bunker, the Today programme has become a clearing-house for people with allegations who won't go to the police. Their reason for not putting the cardinal forward is that he would be facing a kangaroo court. But Angus Stickler, the Today reporter involved, denies any claims of a BBC vendetta against the Catholic Church: "Some people have been saying that there is a media campaign against the cardinal, but that is not the case with me or the BBC. There have been allegations from victims and their parents over a month, and we have investigated them over a month. All we are is the messenger," said Stickler. "It is the job of the BBC, as a public-service broadcaster, to investigate the claims."

Whatever the outcome, the story of the archbishop and the media is likely to run for a while yet – heads will definitely roll, it is just a case of whose, and when.