Scotland: New Archbishop pledges to get 'back to basics'

Archbishop Leo Cushley

Archbishop Leo Cushley, who was installed last week as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, has signalled his ­intention to take a different approach to that of his predecessor Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Instead of focussing on issues of sex and morality he says he intends to re-open an office dedicated to charitable work with the poor and marginalised.

In an interview with The Herald, he said: "There is something else we can do more of, that we're very good at but that we've forgotten the importance of, and which Francis has drawn our attention to, and that is the poor and the weak in society.

"We've drawn the attention of society to that again and again. Even yesterday I had a meeting with the people who help run the Archdiocese and heard about our pastoral outreach work in this area and that area on justice and peace, on the environment and religious education in schools and hospital chaplaincy work. And I said, what about the poor, what are we doing for the poor? And there had been an office for this but I was told that its dormant at the moment and we're waiting for something to be done about it.

"It's not as if it was forgotten, but it was a way of people realising 'here is something we ought not to have let go of'. It was an office someone was no longer head of and I thought 'here we are, here's something Francis wants us to look into' I'm very keen to personally find out very quickly what the Archdiocese does for outreach work to the down-and-outs, the unemployed, the drug addicts and other people at risk that traditionally we help but don't make a big song and dance about it.

" I want familiarise myself with it to see if it's as good as it can be and if we can do better than that if necessary and get ourselves to commit to that."

Speaking about Cardinal O'Brien, he said: "If he comes up to Scotland, what am I to do about that? Probably not a great deal. Someone said it would be a great shame if he couldn't come back and I was excluding him in some way. But it's not my role to tell him what to do. That job belongs to the Holy See."

He said: "Am I the first of the Francis generation? I suppose I am. I find myself saying again and again: 'well Francis has done this, I'd like to imitate that if I could'. And I do it naturally, not in a ­studied way. It seems the most natural thing in the world to take the Pope's lead...

"The essential message doesn't change. But how we present that is going to change in style. And hopefully it will be a style that will help people to listen to the message, at least fairly and give it a chance."

To read the original report see: www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/new-archbishop-shifts-tack.22282232