CPS looks into child abuse case linked to prelate

Police have called in the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) as part of an investigation into allegations that the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales ignored the activities of a paedophile priest in the 1980s.

The inquiry centres on claims that Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, then Bishop of Brighton and Arundel, failed to raise concerns about a priest known to have paedophile tendencies and later given a five-year jail sentence for child abuse offences.

A report in yesterday's Sunday Mirror claimed police were looking at whether there was evidence that the Cardinal knew an offence had been committed and acted in a way intended to impede a prosecution or whether he did any act to pervert the course of justice. It said the priest in question was finally jailed for five years in the mid-1990s for serious sexual offences. They included abusing a boy with learning difficulties and other children as young as 11. The priest was allegedly transferred between churches when allegations came to light, but the police were not informed at the time.

Yesterday the CPS confirmed that prosecution lawyers were helping Sussex Police with their inquiries. A spokeswoman for the CPS said that this advice was confidential.

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor is the leader of 4.1 million practising Catholics in England and Wales. He was made a Cardinal by the Pope in February last year. The leading Catholic journalThe Tablet has described him as "everyone's favourite bishop, human, genial, collaborative, imposing".

Though regarded as a conservative, he eschews such labels as meaningless. "I am a Catholic bishop who respects the traditions of the Church," he has said in the past. He has been forthright on a number of issues since becoming Archbishop of Westminster.

The image of the Catholic Church in Britain and elsewhere has been tarnished by repeated paedophile scandals involving clergymen. In Britain there have been 26 cases in the past six years. In America the role of senior Catholic bishops in covering up the activities of paedophile priests forced the Pope this year to make a public statement warning that child abuse would not be tolerated.