Pope should keep his unpleasant opinions to himself while he is a guest in this country

Archbishop Vincent Nichols, leader of Catholics in England and Wales, has high hopes for the Pope’s visit to the UK next month. He even thinks it can stop the secularisation of society by demonstrating that religious faith “is a gift rather than a problem”.

He said he hoped the state visit from September 16 to 19 would mark a “new phase” in relations between Britain and the Catholic Church. Writing in the Vatican’s own “newspaper” L’Osservatore Romano, Nichols said that faith was increasingly being seen as a private matter which, he suggested, many Christians were tempted to hide away from others who were hostile to the notion of the existence of God.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols

His comments come after a period in which the Church has had to “fight bitterly to retain its rights” in education and to govern its charities in accordance with its teachings. This period has been paralleled, he said, by a rise in an aggressive form of secularism which dictates that religion should have no public role. As a result, the papal visit has met with hostility since it was announced in the spring. He claimed “anti-Catholic activists” were threatening to disrupt events or even arrest the Pope for alleged “crimes against humanity”.

The pope was invited to Britain first by Tony Blair and then by Gordon Brown. Ever since, there has been an outcry at the taxpayer footing much of the £20million bill. Worshippers, even priests, have since been asked to contribute from their own pockets. This is after pressure from the despised aggressive secularists prompted the Catholic Church in England and Wales later to cover the costs of the purely “pastoral” events, estimated at about £7million. This does not of course include the massive security cost of these events seemingly planned without the least concern about the cost to be borne by the taxpayers.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: “The arrogance of these priests knows no bounds. Mr Nichols talks of the ‘rights’ of the church to practise discrimination. No Church has such ‘rights’ in Britain, nor should it have, and the Pope should respect that. If he comes to our country and rails against the equality laws he so despises, it will be seen by many as an impertinence and an insult to the state of which he is supposed to be an honoured guest. The only reason this massive cost is being bankrolled by the taxpayer is that this is, nominally at least, a state visit by a head of state. The protocol of such visits is for the visitor not to engage in the politics of the host country. So, not only do we have to pay for what is largely a religious visit, but the thanks we are likely to get for our largesse is critical interference in our domestic affairs and there will not even be an opportunity for a Right of Reply. As usual for the Vatican it is “heads they win tails we lose”. We appeal to the Pope to stick to religion while he is here and keep his unpleasant political opinions, which even many Catholics find hard to stomach, to himself.”