The new Archbishop of Westminster has attacked the heads of the Premier League and Setanta Sports for showing “disdain” for the religious traditions of Britain.

The Most Rev Vincent Nichols, who will be installed at Westminster in May, has written a strong letter of complaint to Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of the Premier League and Trevor East, the director of sport at Sentanta.

Writing as the Archbishop of Birmingham along with the Church of England’s Bishop David Urquhart, he accuses them of disregarding the importance of Easter Sunday and treading on the sensitivities of employees and football supporters.

“Commercial considerations are not all that matters,” he says.

Archbishop Nichols' previous interventions into public life have been mainly on education, where he forced a Government climb-down over faith school quotas, and on adoption, where he failed to exempt Catholic agencies from rules allowing gay couples to adopt.

As a fanatical Liverpool supporter he follows all debates in the sport and he will be attending the Chelsea-Liverpool match at Anfield this Wednesday. It is a measure of his outrage that even given his passion for the sport, he still believes God must come first and that Easter Day should be football-free.

Local churches have persuaded the Premier League to move the kick-off back half an hour from 1.30pm to 2pm to minimise disruption to services on what is the busiest churchgoing day of the year.

The local Anglican church is near the ground. Worshippers will hold an open air service and hand out Easter eggs to football supporters to remind them what day it is.

And in a further open letter of protest, the area’s church groups are also calling on politicians to ban future matches on Easter Day.

One of the organisations, which represents clergy based near Villa’s home ground, claims this week’s match between the Birmingham club and Everton would cause “chaos” for those visiting local churches.

Aston Churches Working Together, which represents nine local churches, is questioning why the 1994 Sunday Trading Act allowed the match, which is being televised by Setanta Sports, to go ahead while ensuring that supermarkets and other major traders remained shut.

The Bishop of Aston, the Right Rev Andrew Watson, says in the letter that a previous match played three years ago in Birmingham on Easter Day had prevented worshippers reaching and leaving church, and deterred older people and those with disabilities from attending.

The Bishop says: “We thought it would never happen again, but in a week’s time we will face the same chaos.

“Road closures will make it hard for worshippers to return home from church. Around 1,000 people will be prevented either from worship or spending time with their family by the match.

This includes the extra police officers, the caterers and the staff at the grounds.

“Easter Sunday is traditionally the Sunday with the highest church attendance in the year, and many of the local churches’ more elderly and infirm members make a special effort to come to church for the special Easter services.

“It is surely in no one’s interest for them to be caught up with large crowds of football supporters hurrying to arrive by the kick-off.”

The church leaders say that Christian communities around football grounds had learned how to work around the regular scheduling of matches on Sundays.

They continue: “We understand that Sunday is now a work day for many people. However, Easter Sunday is different... only Christmas Day is treated in the same fashion.

“By scheduling matches on Easter Sunday, the Premier League is treating it like any other day.”