The Telegraph parses some of the items in the Pope's published itinerary...
Pope will meet Labour leader
who authored the Equality Laws
he criticized last year
By Martin Beckford
Religious Affairs Correspondent
19 Aug 2010
The Pope will meet Harriet Harman during his historic visit to Britain next month, having strongly criticised the equality laws passed by Labour earlier this year.
[Harman, a member of Parliament, is representing the opposition Labour party among the 3 leading British politicians who will be making individual courtesy calls on the Pope in London.]
Benedict XVI will also have a short meeting with Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister who is an avowed atheist.
It has also emerged that Tony and Cherie Blair will be in the audience when the pontiff addresses the great and the good at Westminster Hall, although they will not meet him privately.
The full itinerary of the first ever state papal visit to Britain was published on Wednesday, with less than a month to go before the Pope’s arrival at Edinburgh Airport on September 16th.
Potentially the most tense encounter of the four-day visit will be the short meeting between the Holy Father, known for his traditional Roman Catholic views on sexuality and the family, and Miss Harman, the acting Labour leader who was a fierce defender of the rights of minority groups while Equality Minister.
The itinerary states that at 9.30am on Saturday 18th, there will be a “Courtesy Call from the Acting Leader of HM Opposition, the Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP, Archbishop's House, Westminster”.
Although Miss Harman’s husband, the Labour MP Jack Dromey, is a Catholic, her flagship Equality Act was opposed by religious leaders who feared they would face prosecution unless they went against their beliefs by employing homosexuals and admitting women to the priesthood. Labour had earlier angered Catholic adoption agencies by requiring that they consider same-sex couples as potential parents.
In an address to 35 Catholic bishops from England and Wales in February this year, the Pope alluded to Labour’s record on religious tolerance when he said: “Your country is well known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”
Benedict XVI will also meet Mr Clegg, who again is married to a Catholic but who has admitted he is “not an active believer”, and David Cameron, who has described his faith as “fairly classic Church of England”.
The printed itinerary made it appear that the Pope would spend half an hour with Miss Harman and far less time with the Prime Minister and his Deputy, but church sources said he would in fact meet her for just five minutes, compared with 15 and 10 minutes respectively with the heads of the Coalition.
Meanwhile Mr Blair, who converted to Rome after leaving Downing Street, and his wife, a “cradle Catholic”, have confirmed that they will be present when the Pope gives his “address to civil society” on the Friday afternoon of his visit.
Baroness Thatcher, John Major and Gordon Brown, the other living former prime ministers, will also attend along with peers, MPs, councillors and religious leaders.
The setting, Westminster Hall, is poignant as it was the place where the Catholic martyr St Thomas More was sentenced to death.
The Church has also disclosed that members of the public not attending the three main open-air events on the Pope’s tour will be able to see him travelling through London and Edinburgh in the Popemobile.
Mgr Andrew Summersgill, the Papal Visit Co-ordinator, said: “With the publication of the itinerary we are now able gladly to confirm that there will be times, during the four days that the Holy Father is here, when he will be travelling in the Popemobile.
“This means that he will be much more visible and will be moving more slowly. This will present a real chance for people to gather and to greet and welcome the Pope.”
Although the itinerary of the visit is now fixed, there are still concerns in the Church that
not all of the tickets for the pastoral events will be allocated [Does anyone really think that there will not be enough takers for 100,000 Mass tickets in Glasgow, 50,000 for the prayer vigil in Hyde Park, and 70,000 for the beatification Mass in Birmingham? That there are not 220,000 out of the UK's 6 million Catholics who will pay anywhere from 5 to 25 pounds to be present at these events?], nor all of its £7million costs raised, while secular groups are objecting to taxpayers being landed with a bill in excess of £12million for the visit.
Damian Thompson on his blog predictably waxed sarcastic about the itinerary and the music that has been lined up for the Pope's liturgies...
blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/damianthompson/
Of course, one must feel strongly for the Pope who will have to put up with pedestrian Christian pop during this visit, and apparently, very litte of traditional 'musica sacra'. One can't expect to change the aesthetic tastes of the troglodytes who made these poor choices, but should they not have shown some consideration for the musical sensibility of their honored guest by including more of the sacred music that is appropriate for his liturgies? The paradox will be that very likely, the Pope will get to hear 'appropriate' music only at the Anglican events he will attend!
As for the Pope's guest list, he has to meet the leaders of Britain's major political parties, and Harman happens to the acting Labour leader now. But rest assured the Pope will convey the message he needs to convey, as he did to Nancy Pelosi and to Barack Obama!
And don't you just love the exquisite timing of the following 'news' about alleged abuses committed decades ago at a Benedictine school called 'St. Benedict's', naturally - which was attended by no less than the UK government's coordinator for the papal visit? A sad reminder that British seculars are waging real war against the Pope and will stop at nothing to spoil his visit and discredit the Catholic Church. The police, according to the story, first received the complaints in June, but it was not 'newsworthy' until just now when the Pope is coming to town!
Child abuse claims at top
UK school St Benedict's
LONDON, Aug. 18 (AFP) - Police are investigating allegations of child abuse made by two former pupils at one of Britain's most prestigious Roman Catholic schools.
London's Metropolitan Police said two men in their forties had made allegations against teachers and staff at St Benedict's School in Ealing, west London, which is attached to a Benedictine monastery.
Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong who is the government's co-ordinator for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain next month, is a former pupil of the school.
One of the men made allegations against an 80-year-old man, who is being investigated but has not been arrested.
Police said two men, aged 68 and 71, had been arrested in connection with allegations made by the second former pupil. They have been released on police bail while the investigation continues.
The two former pupils contacted police in June 2010 following articles in The Times newspaper relating to other abuse cases.
One of the men named in the new allegations is Father David Pearce, a 68-year-old monk and former teacher, who is serving a five-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to abusing eight pupils between 1972 and 2008, according to The Times.
[Good, so one of the offenders is in jail!]
The Roman Catholic Church has been rocked by allegations of child abuse by priests which have spread across Europe from Ireland to the United States and South America.
Pope Benedict will visit Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Birmingham in central England on September 16-19 in the first papal visit to Britain since 1982.
Meanwhile, malice-mongerers in the British media are having a field day purveying and elaborating on chief American malice-mongerer Andrew Sullivan's insinuations about the Pope's sexuality - HE IS ASEXUAL, GET IT?, AS ALL GOOD PRIESTS ARE ASEXUAL, HAVING TRANSCENDED AND SUBLIMATED THE APPETITES OF THE FLESH, and as all Catholic homosexuals should strive to be (OK, so I'm a hidebound traditionalist, and what of it?]. For most of the world, sexuality is hardly the ruling obsession and primary criterion for individual validation that it seems to be for many liberals!
What they're all doing is projecting themselves onto the Pope's person: "He must be homosexual because I say so, and I ought to know, and as a homosexual, this is how he would behave and what he would do!" But isn't their intended denigration of the Pope a tacit acknowledgment of their self-loathing? If homosexuality were all that they tout it to be for themselves, why are they so derogatory about someone who they 'think is one of them'?
Here's a novel reaction to the Pope's itinerary! How about quibbling over the Pope's siesta, as the Independent does?
Spreading the good snooze:
The Pope demands a nap
By Jerome Taylor
Thursday Aug 19, 2010
Pope Benedict XVI has three to four hours each afternoon during his upcoming trip to Britain where nothing is officially scheduled in case he wants to take a nap.
Thomas Edison said a short sleep during the day gave him the energy he needed to invent the electric light bulb, Eleanor Roosevelt wouldn't give a speech without taking one and scientists say a quick snooze in the afternoon can even stave off heart disease.
All of which might explain why the organisers of Benedict XVI's upcoming visit to Britain have been kind enough to earmark time in the Pope's itinerary to allow him to take a nap.
The full details of the 83-year-old's three-day visit in September were published online yesterday for the first time, showing that his trip will be crammed full of official meetings, speeches and helicopter rides to ferry him to the three large outdoor masses that he is due to preside over in Glasgow, Birmingham and London.
But despite the hectic timetable, there is a noticeable gap of three to four hours each afternoon where nothing is officially scheduled. A source with knowledge of the plans told
The Independent that organisers were keen to give the Pontiff time to take a rest should he wish to.
"He's getting on a bit and may need to take a break," the source said, pointing out that Benedict is 20 years older than John Paul II was when he visited Britain in 1982.
Organisers may have been influenced by the Pope's trip to Malta this year, when he was rather
embarrassingly caught napping through a Mass attended by tens of thousands of pilgrims. Video footage of the incident, showing the Pontiff nodding off before being gently nudged awake by a colleague, became an instant YouTube hit.
[If the reporter had done his homework, he would have known that even when he was a cardinal, Benedict XVI's daily habits include a short walk after the midday meal and a nap afterwards. This 'free time' in the Pope's daily schedule wherever he is was an established part of his routine long before Malta. And by the way, no one was embarassed by that brief' nodding off' - there is no one who has not nodded off occasionally.]
Humiliating [Get off it, already! You choose to find it humiliating!] though that incident might have been for the Pontiff, there is plenty of scientific evidence to suggest that his napping habit is good for his health.
In 2007, a six-year study in Greece showed that a short sleep in the middle of the day was likely to reduce a person's risk of death from heart disease - particularly if they were young and healthy men.
The researchers, who looked at 23,681 men and women aged between 20 and 86, found that those who took a 30-minute siesta at least three times a week had a 37 per cent lower risk of heart-related death.
It is known that countries where siestas are common tend to have lower levels of heart disease, and it is also believed that napping helps people to relax, reducing their stress levels.
Studies by Nasa, the US space agency, have also shown that alertness can double after a brief nap, even for well-rested people. It found that average work productivity increases by 13 per cent among nappers.
For the past year the Vatican has
tried to play down fears over the Pope's health. Last summer he slipped and fell in his bedroom, and midnight Mass at Christmas was celebrated two hours earlier than usual
because he was tired [No, dummy! So he could rest earlier before commencing a long day that would begin early the next day.] Officially the Vatican says that the Pope's health is generally good and that he takes medication for a cardiovascular condition.
[And is there supposed to be an unofficial condition that is being withheld from public knowledge???]
It was also announced yesterday that the leader of the world's one billion Catholics would be holding private meetings with individual political leaders. David Cameron has been given a 20-minute slot to greet Benedict, whereas Nick Clegg has just 10 minutes.
The Pope will also meet former equalities minister Harriet Harman, currently acting Leader of the Opposition. It could be an uncomfortable meeting, as when Ms Harman was in government she publicly clashed with the Vatican after Benedict urged his bishops to fight Britain's equality legislation with "missionary zeal".
Tony Blair, who converted to Catholicism after stepping down as Prime Minister and was a key instigator in offering the Pope a state visit, confirmed yesterday that he would be attending Benedict's speech to civil leaders in Westminster Hall on 16 September.
But a source quoted by the Press Association said there would be "no specific Tony Blair moment" in the Pope's itinerary to allow a one-to-one meeting.
[It really is unnecessary! Unless the Blairs would like to tell the Pope personally that they no longer support abortion and homosexual 'marriages'! Don't hold your breath.]
P.S.
That very dubious wannabe papal biographer David Gibson has written another slimy backstabbing piece for the AOL blogsheet Poltiics Daily, in which he seems to promote the equally dubious and harebrained proposals of a woman judge who wants Benedict XVI to wear a 'penitential wardrobe' and throw out anything that smacks of tradition or 'frivolity'. In the process, Gibson makes outrageous lies, such as claiming that the Pope ordered '30 vestments' patterned after those of the last Medici Pope - in which the 30 vestments he refers to must include the Pope's chasuble and dalmatic and similar sets for those who attended and assisted him at a Mass in 2008, including his two cardinal deacons. Lord spare us from 'Catholic' writers like Gibson, whose personal agenda seems to be to find something outrageously negative to say about Benedict XVI in order to be noticed at all! Live with the unflattering truth, Gibson - MSM turn to you only when they can't get John Allen or Thomas Reese to execute the Pope-bashing for them!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/08/2010 17:27]