Faithful are urged to line
the streets to greet Pontiff
By Anna Arco
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
The faithful are being urged to line the streets for the Pope during his visit to Britain in September.
After some confusion about whether Catholics would be encouraged to see Pope Benedict XVI as he made his way to events during his four-day stay in Britain, organisers have said they hope people will come out to see him.
Tickets for papal events are becoming ever more difficult to obtain as many parishes are experiencing a high demand for them, so organisers are urging Catholics to consider other options.
According to Mgr Andrew Summersgill, the bishops’ papal visit coordinator, the Pope will use the Popemobile, a white fortified Mercedes with a glass cage, for some parts of the trip so that people can greet him. When the final programme is finished, he said, people will have opportunities to greet the Pope.
“Some of his movements will be in the Popemobile, precisely so that people can gather and greet him as he travels, and that will be made quite clear when the programme is published,” he said. “I hope that as many people as possible would take that opportunity to be able to welcome Pope Benedict as he goes by – that would be great.”
The Popemobile plans also include the possibility of the Pope being driven around Cofton Park in Birmingham before and after the Beatification of John Henry Newman so that assembled pilgrims can see him.
Some reports said that the idea of the Popemobile for Cofton Park had been dropped because of rising costs, but Canon Patrick Browne, the papal visit coordinator for the Archdiocese of Birmingham, said they were still working on “allowing as many people as possible to view the Holy Father as he passes by and to welcome him and support the Church in its mission”.
Speaking at a press conference in Birmingham, Canon Browne said organisers were still working with the various agencies to get the Popemobile to Birmingham. He said there were fears that the slope at Cofton Park might be too dangerous for the Popemobile.
Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham said: “think of the papal audiences in Rome which are very often in St Peter’s Square and the huge numbers of people who come there.
“It is an ideal way of letting people who are at some distance from where the Pope speaks to actually see something of him up close. I think that remains a legitimate aspiration.”
He also announced that the American deacon miraculously cured with the help of Cardinal Newman will have a major role in the Birmingham cardinal’s beatification Mass.
Deacon Jack Sullivan, from Massachusetts, whose spinal disorder disappeared after he prayed for the intercession of Cardinal Newman, will proclaim the Gospel and act as deacon at the beatification Mass.
The miracle, subjected to rigorous tests by a series of doctors and then by theologians, was necessary to advance the process of beatification. The Church requires one miracle attributed to a Servant of God for beatification and a second one for canonisation.
Archbishop Longley said: “Another thing that is at the heart of the beatification is a recognition of Cardinal Newman’s intercessory powers. We can speak about prayer to the saints as part of the life of the Church.
“We feel a closeness to those who are part of the communion of the saints. So people do pray and have prayed to Cardinal Newman that his prayers to Almighty God may assist him in their daily lives. This has been recognised through the Church’s miraculous cure of an American deacon who is living and working in the diocese of Boston. I also had the chance of meeting him quite recently. I am glad that he will be coming to Birmingham together with his wife, Carol, and some of his family as my personal guest for the beatification itself.”
Mr Sullivan and his wife will take part in a procession to honour Newman at the beginning of the Mass at Cofton Park during the rite of Beatification.
At the start of the rite, Archbishop Longley will formally request the beatification of Cardinal Newman from the Pope. The archbishop also said that the beatification was one of the main reasons for which Pope Benedict accepted the Government’s invitation to come to Britain.
He said: “The beatification comes as the culmination of the four-day visit of the Holy Father and I think that the interest and excitement towards the beatification will build up inevitably within those four days. I think that’s right because, as far as I understand it, one of the things which has persuaded Pope Benedict to accept this invitation on the part of Her Majesty’s Government, to accept also the welcome from our own Catholic Church in England and Wales and Scotland, is precisely because of the beatification of Cardinal Newman.
“His own interest is in this and it is significant that he has decided, has chosen to do something which is quite unusual today.”
Now, the secular media are making much of the fee being asked of pilgrims who will get tickets to the prayer vigil in London and the beatification Mass in Birmingham - and the communications pooh-bahs of the Church of England and Wales are being much too defensive about it. The Church obviously needs help to defray its part of the expenses. So why not ask the faithful to help out? I cannot imagine any Catholic - even in these difficult times - begrudging a 25-pound contribution for this purpose, especially since it comes with the privilege of admission to one of the two historic public events of the papal visit. I would think of it as a 'sacrifice' of 2 pounds a month for one year... After all, there is no lack of people willing to pay ten times or even 100 times that amount to scalpers for a ticket to a rock concert or a big game.
Papal visit will see public
paying up to £25 for a ticket
By Lewis Smith
Thursday, 29 July 2010
The faithful are to be charged up to £25 a head to see Pope Benedict XVI when he comes to Britain later this year.
It will be the first time pilgrims have been charged to attend events during a papal visit and the charges reflect mounting concerns about the costs of the trip.
Charges will be levied for tickets to two events: a prayer vigil in London's Hyde Park on 18 September and the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman in Birmingham the following day.
Church officials said the charges are for transportation to the London and Birmingham events but that pilgrims who want to attend must join a parish group and cannot travel independently. There are 70,000 tickets for the beatification and 130,000 for the Hyde Park vigil.
They said the charges were being made because the pilgrims would be "journeying" to see the Pope, just as ancient pilgrims did, and would be provided with a "pilgrim pack".
[This kind of 'forced' justification is painful even to read! Just say it out plainly: "We have been unable to raise everything we need to pay for during the visit, so we need your help in the form of a modest contribution". The 'pilgrim pack' itself is usually given free at similar papal visits, and I cannot imagine any pilgrim to these events not wanting to keep souvenirs of it.]
A spokesman said: "Those attending the gatherings are not just 'ticket' holders, nor guests nor visitors; they are gathering as a representative body of the faithful from across the UK and thus are more akin to the ancient notion of pilgrims journeying to a spiritual experience – in the same way that the Vatican entitles all papal visits as an 'apostolic journey'."
[UGH! It gets even more embarrassing - all these faux sentiments! Each pilgrim who makes an effort to see the Pope during these visits knows exactly why he/she is doing it, and what a privilege it is to get a ticket to historic events. They don't have to be told.
I only feel bad that English Catholics will not have the opportunity to experience the first beatification to be presided by a Pope on English soil in the same way that the Brazilians did when the Pope canonized Fray Galvao in Sao Paolo three years ago - almost a million of them turned up at Sao Paolo's old airfield.]
The Vatican has been alarmed by the costs of the visit, with the most recent estimates suggesting it will have to find £14m while taxpayers are facing a £20m bill.
[Too late now to lament what the British taxpayer will have to pay for - but as Lord Patten has pointed out, they spent 20-mil alone in security costs for one day of a Western leaders' summit, in which none of them had to face the public in any way at all.
Why did the Labor government volunteer to make the visit a state visit at, to begin with? Since Gordon Brown is not Catholic and therefore had no special reason to honor the Pope with the highest possible type of official invitation, one must surmise his government saw some advantage to be had from having the Pope make a state visit!]
Officials have blamed health and safety rules for increasing the costs and said there are considerably more regulations than in 1982 when Pope John Paul II visited.
[That and the natural inflation that has occurred over the past three decades! We're talking 1982 and 2010 here - a different generation and a different epoch even!]]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/07/2010 18:47]