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Terry Philpot talks to Eileen Shearer about her role in overseeing the protection of children and vulnerable adults within the Catholic Church and how structures derived from the secular world will fit with the requirements of canon law.

The Church may, as the saying goes, think in terms of eternity. But on child protection it has acted in a shorter timescale. Last spring, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales accepted all 50 recommendations of the interim report of the Nolan review of the Church and child protection.¹ And earlier this month the appointment was announced of Eileen Shearer, former NSPCC regional director for the south west region and a non-Catholic, as the Church's first national co-ordinator for child protection.

But however commendable the Catholic Church's recent actions may be, it has been a painful and very public journey. In July 2000, the newly installed Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, was found to have allowed Father Michael Hill to continue to work despite the fact that he had sexually abused young boys. Murphy-O'Connor had been the bishop of Arundel & Brighton at the time.

The Church published guidelines on child abuse in 1994.² They were in advance of canon law³ - the legislation that governs the Church - but seem to have had little impact. Critically, they relied on using the Church's own resources. For example, each diocese was to appoint a priest as the "bishop's representative on child protection".

Then came the Hill scandal, and events in Wales which led to the Pope sacking Archbishop Ward. The Archbishop had failed to act in the case of two paedophile priests but, unlike Murphy-O'Connor, seemed either unaware of, or unrepentant about, his misjudgement.

Independence became the watchword. While an eminent Catholic judge chaired the Nolan review, only four of its 10 members were Catholics. The new management board, to which Eileen Shearer and her new Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Adults (Copca) will be accountable, also has a non-Catholic majority. It cannot be wholly chance that the new appointee is a non-Catholic.

Eileen Shearer comes from an Anglican background but has not practised any religion since she was a teenager. Her application was conditional on how committed to change she felt the church to be "and the reason I am sitting here now talking to you is that I became convinced of that". She talked to priests and Catholics she knew, and she was impressed by the wholesale endorsement of Nolan by the bishops, and the rigour of the assessment process for the job.

As a non-Catholic, she says: "I needed to know whether my values and the values of the Catholic Church would fit. I needed to talk to people to see if I would fit with them and they would be comfortable with me."

Working within a church and culture not her own, and with people with whom she does not share those affiliations might seem, at first sight, to offer difficulties. Shearer cites her experience at the NSPCC of moving from practitioner to holding three management posts and says that it is never wise to make assumptions even when you are within an organisation.

Copca will be based in Birmingham with Shearer and three professional staff to support the child protection officers in each diocese and religious order. Her brief will also include developing best practice, whistleblowing policies, guidelines based on the government's Working Together,⁴ training, raising awareness among the faithful, and maintaining the new database. The diocesan officers remain responsible to their bishops and religious superiors, not to Shearer.

The Vatican hailed the Nolan prescription as a model, and Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said that the church intended to be "second to none" in protecting children. Such words, allied with such a history, place a heavy burden on the new arrangements, which look rather modest.

The Catholic Church has 4,153,000 members in England and Wales, more than a million weekly mass-goers and 6,243 priests together with nuns and unordained monks. Each parish, of which there are more than 2,000, is obliged to appoint a child protection representative. Eileen Shearer doesn't see the size of Copca as a problem in implementing this and much else - it is a matter of oversight by the bishops, self-audit by parishes and dioceses, Copca audit, and the work of the diocesan co-ordinators. There will also be a public annual report from the office. Mark Morley, director of the Catholic Communications Service, stresses the virtues of gradualness: "Nolan has to be implemented according to priority."

Catholic canon law prevents anyone being barred from mass, but Nolan refers to "clear boundaries" to protect children while ministering to abusers who are intent on not re-offending and are present in the congregation but with no position of responsibility.

As Shearer says, the problem may be less with the known abuser: "There has been a lot of publicity about priests who have abused [21 convictions between 1994 and 1999] but the number of people convicted, priests or otherwise, is minuscule next to the number of abusers. You may have a very 'respectable' person coming to mass who returns to abuse his children."

The church has to be careful that procedures and awareness do not destroy trust, make people over-sensitive and dissuade those who genuinely want to help. Here, Shearer says: "The way you introduce an idea to people is what's important. People then have to choose if, for example, they want to undergo police checks in the same way as, say, those who come forward to foster and adopt. But it is also important not to get hung up about police checks because they are so basic. It is partly a question of sending out signals." At the moment those signals dazzle - even the management board and the director of communications underwent police checks.

Nolan said that its recommendations did not conflict with canon law - an important consideration for an institution which cannot change its constitution by a majority vote at a monthly, or even an annual meeting - but there are matters which might be seen to be problematic. Bishops, for example, are autonomous within their own diocese. However, they will be deferring to Copca on child protection matters and they will also no longer be able to overrule selection boards for ordinands (those preparing for the priesthood).

Priests, too, enjoy a fairly unfettered power in their parishes, which Shearer believes could be modified because "the Church wants people to have a different view about making an allegation - that it will not be seen to be disloyal to do so." Canon law does not provide any code of conduct - although Nolan offers an example - nor anything that resembles a modern line management structure or recognisable professional supervision for priests. In time, too, child protection may be included in seminarians' curriculum.

What has been the effect on the Catholic Church of these scandals? "As a non-Catholic, perhaps it is not for me to say," says Shearer, "but I have come to understand that the dangers were greater than I thought they were. The morale of priests has been undermined by things that happened in the past. How many people now think twice about their children being involved in Church activities?" Rebuilding morale and trust, as well as the greater protection of children, will also be a marker of the success of Eileen Shearer and her team.  

¹ Nolan committee, A Programme for Action: Final Report of the Independent Review on Child Protection in the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, 2000

² Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, Child Abuse: Pastoral and Procedural Guidelines, 1994

³ "Documentation: Sex abuse and canon law", The Tablet, 29 July 2000

⁴ Department of Health, Working Together to Safeguard Children, DoH, 1999