Our man in Westminster

No doubt we are all equal in the eyes of God, yet down here among the Catholic flock of England and Wales some sheep have to be more equal than others. Sir Stephen Wall, senior adviser on public affairs to Cardinal Cormac MurphyO’Connor, is perhaps the most important layman working for the Church in this country.
Earlier this year Sir Stephen left his job as Tony Blair’s closest adviser on European affairs to take up his post with the Cardinal. Since that appointment, Catholic journalists and others involved in the Church have noticed a marked improvement in the Church’s public relations. Two years ago, the Cardinal was the victim of a cruel “Get Cormac” campaign, conducted by vicious hacks who smelt blood in the wake of paedophilia scandals. Today, with Sir Stephen at his side, one suspects that Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor would be better protected in a crisis.
Sir Stephen is, above all, a professional. A distinguished career in the civil service has given him the unwavering smoothness of an effective diplomat. He is also nice: friendly, open and unassuming. When discussing anything tricky or personal, his chin tilts inwards, while the eyebrows pop up and the glance looks downwards. It is an endearing gesture, modest but somehow confident.
Sir Stephen is now 57, and for nearly all his life Catholicism has been an integral part of his existence. Although his paternal background was Methodist, his mother was a Catholic whose father had converted after hearing Cardinal Newman preach. Stephen Wall was brought up as a Catholic, and such he has remained. He has not, however, found faith easy; indeed, for five years in the 1970s, when he was a civil servant in Europe, he lost touch with the Church.
It was his mother’s sudden death that brought him back towards belief. She suffered a minor heart attack, was admitted to hospital, and asked for the last rites. The doctors telephoned a priest, but told the cleric that there was no need for him to come as her condition was stable.
Fortunately, the priest was alert to his duty and visited Mrs Wall anyway. That night, she suffered a major cardiac arrest and died.
“The fact that her last conscious act had been to make sure she had the last sacraments had quite a profound effect on me,” Sir Stephen explains. “I think it made me go back to being a Catholic.” During his time at Douai School and Selwyn College, Cambridge, Sir Stephen developed a natural gift for languages which propelled him towards a career in the Foreign Office. He held important posts in America, Ethiopia (where Haile Selassie was still Emperor) and in Europe, including a spell under Christopher Soames in Paris. In London, he served as private secretary to Sir Geoffrey Howe, John Major and Douglas Hurd. When John Major became Prime Minister, Sir Stephen was called to work in Downing Street. This was followed by two spells in Portugal and Brussels; and he was appointed KCMG in 1995.
He returned to London to work for Tony Blair, who asked him to run the European Secretariat to the Cabinet Office. Then, before the election of 2001, Mr Blair invited Sir Stephen to work inside Number 10. “I always thought it was because he had probably never been in the Cabinet Office and didn’t actually realise it was only two minutes away,” Sir Stephen jokes.
“But I was given Alastair Campbell’s office, so I wasn’t complaining.” Nevertheless, within three years he had abandoned this powerful job and started to work, presumably on a much smaller salary, for the Church. “I decided that I had been there and got the Tshirt, and that I wanted to do something else,” he says. Did he perhaps have moral objections to the war in Iraq? Or to Tony Blair’s attitude to the European Union?
“I regret now that I did not express my doubts to Tony Blair about the legality of the Iraq war – not that it would have made the slightest difference. I was not in the loop, I was not involved in the meetings on Iraq. He probably would have listened to me, rolled his eyes and said ‘Thanks Stephen, now b off’– in a nice way of course.” The most significant factor in his departure was probably frustration at the Government’s hesitancy to announce a referendum on the Single European Currency. “When I took the job I thought one of the exciting things was going to be preparing for a Euro referendum, and it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, certainly not within this Government and probably not for a few years yet.” After Sir Stephen told Tony Blair he was leaving, the Prime Minister announced a referendum on the European Constitution. “By then, though, I thought I would actually rather be outside government and able to speak my mind, rather being inside government and having to keep quiet.” Sir Stephen is, by his own admission, passionately proEuropean. Earlier this year the bishops’ conference emphasised its enthusiasm for closer European union. Sir Stephen echoes this view with an idealistic, almost religious fervour. Indeed, it is the only subject on which he comes anywhere near losing his diplomatic cool.
“As a teenager,” he recalls, “I believed in the notion of something that brought formerly warring countries together, and made it harder for them to go to war, or quarrel dangerously with each other.” Sir Stephen plays down the apparent exclusion of Christianity from the European Union. He describes the Buttiglione affair – in which Italy’s nominee Rocco Buttiglione was rejected by the European Parliament, seemingly for his Catholic views on homosexuality and motherhood – as a political attack on President Berlusconi rather than ideological aggression against Christianity.
“Berlusconi’s government is pretty unpopular in the European Parliament, particularly on the Left. If Buttiglione had been anybody other than Berlusconi’s candidate, I don’t think he would have been treated in quite the same way. It would not be correct to read the affair as an attack on Christian values. I don’t think the problem is an attack on Christian values, it is indifference.” He is equally unfazed by the absence of any mention of Christianity in the preamble to the EU constitution: “It would have been good to have it. Because we have an established Church, the British government would have been happy to see it. It was the opposition of the French which killed it. On the other hand, we have got into the treaty a recognition of all faiths and an obligation of European Parliament to consult with those faiths.” “The fact that the European Union is a secular organisation doesn’t mean that its values are not, to a large extent, informed by Christian values. Fundamentally, it is an idealistic organisation, in the sense that its primary motivation is to find a way of managing and to some extent subordinating national interest for the collective good of 25 countries who want to live in peace with each other.” He feels that the Church in Europe should lead by example and the power of its argument.
“We should not rely on people to believe that because the Church is a creation of God, then it has a God-given right to influence their lives.” Just as his ideas on Europe will not appeal to conservatives, so his vision of the future of the Church is unlikely to inspire traditionalists. He shares with the Cardinal the view that the Church in this country must adapt to the fact that there are fewer people attending Mass, and develop a system whereby lay people fill the gap left by limited funds and by the declining number of parish priests. A project such as At Your Word, Lord, which involves the meeting of lay groups, is thus a model for the dismantled parish system of years to come.
Yet this depiction of British Catholicism in the future still seems quite negative, almost an admission that the Church has lost the battle against secularism and must be put into hibernation. Sir Stephen disagrees, arguing that the reshaping of the Church could be positive: “It is recognising that actually the Church is us, and it is up to us to make it work. It requires a different relationship between the priest and the people. It is frightening if you are used to the old system. But also, it could be quite exciting. It could be vibrant, and if it is seen to be vibrant, it could start attracting more people again.” Sir Stephen believes that people will eventually recognise that the Cardinal was right to pursue this approach. He does not think that the increased involvement of the laity will undermine the role of the priest or the importance of the sacraments in Catholic life, although he admits that it may be difficult to find the right balance.
Sir Stephen is not just toeing the line of the bishops’ conference on these issues. His commitment to a politically united Europe and to an active laity in the Church is both genuine and profound.
While many Catholics, not to mention members of the Roman Curia, might disagree fiercely with him on these matters, the Cardinal’s adviser is far from being a dangerous Lefty with an uncontrollable obsession for “empowering the laity”. First and foremost he is a man of reason, open to argument and willing to subject his beliefs to calm discussion.
He brings to the Church in this country a professionalism and a transparency that have been sorely absent in recent years. The Cardinal is in good hands.