Baroness Thatcher is to have a private audience with the Pope at the Vatican next week.The former Prime Minister is flying to Italy on Frdiay to stay with Carla Powell whose husband Charles was her foreign policy adviser at Downing Street.
Lady Powell, who lives in a villa on the outskirts of Rome, arranged the meeting with Pope Benedict XVI which will take place in the Vatican on Wednesday.
The meeting will come more than 30 years after Lady Thatcher first travelled to the Vatican, as Leader of the Opposition, to meet Pope Paul VI.
In November 1980 she met Pope John Paul II, the former Polish Cardinal, who agreed to put pressure on the Irish Republican inmates in the Maze prison who were on hunger strike.
Lady Thatcher is going to Italy with her daughter Carol.
In February Gordon Brown had a private 35-minute meeting with the Pope at the Vatican this year. It was their second meeting since he became Prime Minister in June 2007.
Tony Blair, who also met the Pope, converted to Roman Catholicism six months after he stood down as Prime Minister.
When she was in politics Lady thatcher talked about the influence of her Methodist upbringing.
Her father was a Methodist lay preacher in t heir home town of Grantham.
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