Thursday, February 18, 2010

20,000 sign petition demanding Pope funds UK visit

A PETITION calling for the Pope to pay for his own visit to Britain has received more than 20,000 signatures.

The estimated £20million cost of the four-day visit to these shores, which begins in Edinburgh, will largely be met by the taxpayer.

But the National Secular Society have launched an online petition calling for the Pope to pay for his own visit.

President Terry Sanderson said: "We thought when we heard the Pope was coming there must be an element of hostility to it from the groups he has criticised and made life difficult for, so we decided we would put this petition online.

"We thought we would get a few hundred signatures but we now have more than 20,000.

"We have a slot to deliver the petition to Downing Street on March 4.

"We did a lot of research into how much it cost other countries to host similar visits and we think that's a conservative estimate, particularly given the scale of security needed.

"We're not saying don't come, but we think it should be a pastoral visit funded by the church and not a state visit funded by the taxpayer."

Pope Benedict XVI's visit - the country's first papal visit since John Paul II's historic Mass at Glasgow's Bellahouston Park in 1982 - is scheduled to begin in Scotland.

He will fly from Rome to Edinburgh on September 16, where he will be received by the Queen at Holyrood Palace.

The pontiff will also visit Glasgow, where he is expected to address thousands of worshippers at an open-air event at Glasgow Green.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland said: "This is a state visit at the invitation of the UK Government and so the standard approach is they will fund the cost.

"There might be some costs to the Catholic Church - that's still to be decided.

"There were objections to the visit by the Pope in 1982, which had no direct impact whatsoever on what was agreed to be a tremendous event for Scotland.

"Where do the objections come from? The chronic weakness of online petitions is that fictional characters from anywhere can sign.

"The important thing is to establish the true level of opposition that really exists. It's likely to be minimal and marginal."

Gordon Brown invited Benedict XVI but is understood to have made clear that the Government will not cover all the costs.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: "We are still in discussions with the Vatican about the visit programme and it's too early to discuss costs."

A wave of protests are expected to greet the visit after the Pope sparked fury among secular and gay rights campaigners when he attacked equality legislation in Britain.

He said it ran contrary to "natural law" and imposed unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities.

The pontiff's remarks to bishops of England and Wales were seen as an attack on the sexual orientation regulations which forced Catholic adoption agencies to consider gay couples.

The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, said: "Scottish Catholics continue to feel the effects of secularisation.

"That's why the voice of the Church is clearly audible against secularisation and of certain laws that the Government plans."
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