The most senior Catholic in England and Wales has defended the Vatican’s refusal to co-operate with a sex abuse inquiry, saying that the Holy See was entitled to do so under diplomatic law.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, said that Catholics in England and Wales had been “struggling to cope with the presence of evil embodied in its members” as he appeared in front of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse yesterday. He said that Catholics had been “shocked . . . to the core” by two decades of abuse revelations.

The inquiry has criticised the Vatican for failing to respond to its requests for information during its examination of abuse within Catholic churches and schools in England and Wales. The