The first state visit by a pope to Britain comes at a low point in relations between Catholics and Anglicans and under the weight of the clerical sex abuse crisis.
Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Scotland on Thursday morning to spend four days in Britain ”” the first visit by a pope in nearly 30 years and the first papal state visit since King Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534 over a divorce.
The trip includes a meeting with Queen Elizabeth in Scotland, a speech in Westminster Hall, an ecumenical service with the archbishop of Canterbury and the beatification of a 19th century Anglican who converted to Catholicism.
Looming over the visit are 400 years of religious tensions and more contemporary divisions.
“the first visit by a pope in nearly 30 years and the first papal state visit since King Henry VIII…” Alright, I take it there are just papal visits (like Pope John Paul’s “pastoral” visit) and then there are papal state visits. Can someone explain the difference for me?
#1 episcoanglican
This visit is an official state visit of the Pope as a head of state of Vatican City at the invitation of the Queen as head of state of the United Kingdom. He is thus an official guest of the British Government with all the pomp and ceremonial that that goes with it.
The last visit of the prior Pope was a ‘private’ visit which had the pastoral aspects of the Pope’s visit as head of the Roman Catholic church to his bishops and congregations here, as well as his invitation to participate with events with the Church of England as brother Christians, but he was not here at the official invitation of the British Government so there was no “official” aspect to it, although he was privately greeted and welcomed at all levels and it was, in its way, probably more ground-breaking than this one will be.
I would add that in relation to this article, there appears to have been a real effort on the parts of both the Catholic and Anglican churches in Enlgand to present a united front for this visit. Things reached a real low last year with the show trial presentation of the ABC as hostage to the machinations of the CDF and the ABC’s quiet expression of indifference to the visit of the Pope, other than as a visitor. However, there does seem to have been an attempt to patch things up: nice articles by CofE bishops in the papers looking forward to the visit; a visit to Lambeth Palace by HH; and a joint event with HH and the bishops of the Catholic Church in England and Wales together with the bishops of the Church of England; and a service at Westminster Abbey [which should help, provided there is no silly rudeness by some of the petulant little girls who want to be bishops who lurk in our Cathedrals with an overinflated view of their own worth and doing, well, no-one really knows quite what, certainly no evangelism, although occasionally something like a Hindu snowman crops up. Mind you, they are probably no worse than the chinless aff caffs our liberal Archbishops are stuffing the HOB with]