England's most senior Catholic clergyman faces embarrassment this week when he appears before an inquiry to answer claims he ignored child sex abuse allegations against his priests, including the son of JRR Tolkien.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, is to give evidence in person to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which is investigating how a number of key institutions in Britain handled sex abuse claims.

The hearing will examine the Cardinal’s former Archdiocese of Birmingham, where he served as Archbishop from 2000 to 2009.

It will look into the handling of allegations against Father John Tolkien, the son of JRR Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, who was questioned by police in 2002 over an abuse allegation, but was never charged.

Cardinal Nichols faces claims that senior church officials allowed Fr Tolkien, who died in 2003, to carry on working until around the time Cardinal Nichols took over at the Archdiocese, despite senior officials promising an alleged victim years earlier that he would be forced to retire.

Fr Tolkien had been accused by a Birmingham man, Christopher Carrie, of having twice sexually abused him in November 1956, when he was aged 11.

When, as an adult, he discovered in 1993 that Fr Tolkien was working as a parish priest in Oxfordshire, Mr Carrie reported the alleged abuse to the then Archbishop of Birmingham, Maurice Couve de Murville, who promised that senior officials would investigate.