Findings from the Ashgate Arts and Humanities Research
Council/Economic and Social Research Council Religion and Society
Programme analysed media coverage of both visits and was published this
month in Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred.
In 1982 the British media portrayed Pope John Paul II's visit as a
way of overcoming disagreements between Catholics and Protestants. But
comparison with coverage of the 2010 visit revealed a greater
identification of the political Left with secularism, and the Right with
Christianity and a criticism of multiculturalism.
The authors of the study, Professor Kim Knott, Dr Elizabeth Poole and
Dr Teemu Taira, said: "In 2010 there was felt a need to reclaim the
position of religion and to justify it in public discourse against (real
or imagined) threats posed by increasing diversity and a more audible
atheism and secularism."