|TOP|The Archbishop of Westminster has told delegates at a conference in Cambridge earlier in the week that “extreme and shameful poverty” still exists in contemporary Britain despite the record spending that has gone into boosting the country’s welfare.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor made the comments earlier in the week at the annual conference of Caritas, the confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development and social service organisations, held at Corpus Christi College.

He said that Britain’s welfare state was “full of holes” which “increasing numbers of people” were falling through, reports The Good News.

"It is a kind of poverty which is not purely material, but which involves great anguish and suffering. It is multidimensional, where the welfare state is too often one-dimensional," he said.

|QUOTE|In his talk, entitled The Practice of Love by the Church as a Community of Love, the cardinal also commented that faith-based organisations competing for public funds “often feel marginalised because of the difficulty of using taxation for what are perceived to be religious organisations”.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor added that the obstacles remained “despite the commitment by Government and the other parties to eliminating this barrier”.

He went on to call on fellow Catholics in England and Wales to commit themselves to greater engagement in social action to support vulnerable people, adding that the action “must start with the Church, as God's family on Earth, looking to its own congregations and understanding their needs.”.

The Archbishop of Westminster also noted the changing character and needs of congregations in the country’s major cities which are seeing a swell of migrant workers, people whose “precarious living standards impose terrible burdens on their families,” he said.

“People whom every Sunday we stand alongside in the pews need us to stand alongside them in their need of justice and charity,” he said.

"We can only do this when we understand their needs, when we enter into their lives."





Daniel Blake
Christian Today Correspondent