Cardinal Vincent Nichols at the Vatican before the start of a session of the Synod on the Family, Oct. 10, 2014.

Bohumil Petrik
Cardinal Vincent Nichols at the Vatican before the start of a session of the Synod on the Family, Oct. 10, 2014.

In a personal statement shared with journalists at a press conference Friday, the cardinal said that the report had “brought together a picture of abuse inflicted in the Catholic Church over a period of 50 years.”