Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has intervened in the Brexit debate, saying he hopes Britain will stay in the European Union. In an article for the Spectator, the cardinal said: “I wish Britain to remain a part of the European community and cooperate ... to build a union that is greater than the sum of its parts.” Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, who was Archbishop of Westminster from 2000 to 2009, argued that although the EU needed reforming, Brexit would “make renewal even more difficult”. The cardinal said the debate had overlooked “the more profound issues of our time” and had been overly dominated by economic concerns. He said EU supporters “need to show that the challenges facing the UK and our European partners are better faced together than apart, and they need to explain why this is the case.” Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor’s endorsement of Remain comes after his successor Cardinal Vincent Nichols said a vote to leave would “create more complex problems”. In the Spectator article, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said the Church had “always encouraged relationships between nations that draw them together rather than divide them”. He said working in Rome and with European bishops gave him a sense of “how [Europeans] feel about the need for wider European unity”.