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19 DAYS TO THE PAPAL VISIT

No. 6470

Full details of Pope’s British visit are unveiled

BY ANNA ARCO

THE ORGANISERS of the papal visit to Britain have unveiled Benedict XVI’s full schedule, which will include a meeting with the controversial former Equality Minister Harriet Harman.

The Pope is scheduled to meet Miss Harman, acting leader of the Opposition, as part of a courtesy call from the country’s leading politicians. He will also spend 10 minutes with Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, and 20 minutes with David Cameron.

Earlier this year Pope Benedict severely criticised the equality laws passed under Miss Harman. During his ad limina address to the bishops of England and Wales in January Pope Benedict described the legislation as imposing “unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs”. He also said that aspects of the legislation violated natural law.

Miss Harman piloted the Equality Act 2010, which aimed at consolidating all the existing equality legislation, through Parliament earlier this year. At the time the bishops feared that the Government was introducing new limitations to equality legislation which might have forced them to accept women priests as well as make it impossible to discipline errant priests without crippling legal action.

The Pope’s meeting with Miss Harman will come only a month after the Charity Commission rejected an appeal by Catholic Care Leeds, the last Catholic adoption agency, to be exempt from the Sexual Orientation Regulations.

The regulations, which were incorporated into the Equality Act, obliged Catholic adoption agencies either to close or to assess samesex couples and sever ties with the Church.

Newly released details about the papal trip to Britain also include a visit to a care home and indicated that the Pope will take breaks to rest during the strenuous schedule of the trip.

Benedict XVI, who turned 83 this year, will visit St Peter’s Residence for older people in Vauxhall during his stay in London. The Little Sisters of the Poor, founded by St Jeanne Jugan, who was beatified last year, run the home for the elderly, which was founded in 1863.

Mgr Andrew Summersgill, the papal visit coordinator, said: “The importance of this visit is that within all the great gatherings and events of the papal visit there’s a real opportunity for the Holy Father to go as a pastor to those who cannot go to him – to those who are housebound, to those who are elderly.

“I also think it’s a chance to underline the importance the Church places, and particularly Pope Benedict places, in his own teaching and ministry, in the value of life from its beginning to its natural end,” he said.

On Friday, the Pope will celebrate Mass privately at the nunciature before heading to St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, for the “Big Assembly” and a day packed with ecumenical events.

On Saturday, the Pope will celebrate Mass at Westminster Cathedral and greet the young people gathered on the Cathedral piazza. That evening sees the biggest open-air event, the vigil in Hyde Park.

On Sunday, Pope Benedict will be taken to Birmingham by helicopter to beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman. Parts of the new English translation of the Missal will be used during the Mass.

Pope Benedict will deliver a homily and pray the Angelus before paying a private visit to Newman’s Oratory in Edgbaston.

Editorial Comment: Page 13

CatholicHerald.co.uk

August 27 2010 £1.20 (Republic of Ireland €1.70)

Pope Benedict XVI is pictured during Sunday’s Angelus at Castel Gandolfo Photo: CNS

THE ITINERARY

Thursday, September 16 08:10 Departure from Ciampino Airport, Rome 10:30 Arrival at Edinburgh International Airport 11:00 State Welcome and Audience with HM Queen Elizabeth II, Palace of Holyrood House 11:40 State Reception in the grounds of the Palace of Holyrood House 13:00 Private Lunch with the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh 17:15 Pope Benedict XVI presides at the celebration of Mass, Bellahouston Park 20:00 Departure from Glasgow Airport 21:25 Arrival at Heathrow Airport Friday, September 17 08:00 Private Celebration of Mass in the Chapel of the Apostolic Nunciature 10:00 Celebration of Catholic Education, St Mary's University College, Twickenham. Prayer with Representatives of Religious Congregations in St Mary’s Chapel Gathering with schoolchildren and students, Sports Arena, including the inauguration of the John Paul II Institute for Sport 11:30 Meeting with Religious Leaders and People of Faith, Waldegrave Drawing Room, St Mary’s University College, Twickenham. 16:00 Fraternal Visit to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lambeth Palace 17:10 Address to Civil Society, Westminster Hall, Palace of Westminster 18:15 Celebration of Evening Prayer, Westminster Abbey Saturday, September 18 09:00 Courtesy call from the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon David Cameron MP, Archbishop's House, Westminster 09:20 Courtesy call from the Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Nick Clegg MP 09:30 Courtesy call from the Acting Leader of HM Opposition, the Rt Hon Harriet Harman 10:00 Mass in the Cathedral of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Westminster Pope Benedict will greet 2,500 young people gathered in the Piazza to welcome him Pope Benedict will greet the people of Wales 17:00 Visit to St Peter’s Residence for Older People, Vauxhall 18:15 Prayer Vigil on the Eve of the Beatification of Cardinal Newman, Hyde Park Sunday, September 19 08:00 Farewell to the Apostolic Nunciature, Wimbledon 08:45 Departure by helicopter for Birmingham, Wimbledon Park 09:30 Arrival by helicopter in Birmingham 10:00 Celebration of Mass with the Beatification of Cardinal Newman, Cofton Park 13:10 Private Visit to the Oratory of St Philip Neri, Edgbaston, Birmingham 13:45 Lunch with the Bishops of England, Scotland and Wales and the Papal Entourage, Oscott College 16:45 Meeting with the Bishops of England, Scotland and Wales, Seminary Chapel, Oscott College 18:15 Departure Ceremony, Birmingham International Airport

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Pope will not ask SSPX to accept Vatican II, claims Williamson

BY MARK GREAVES

BISHOP Richard Williamson has claimed that Benedict XVI is ready to let the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) return to full communion with Rome without explicit acceptance of the Second Vatican Council.

He said instead that the Pope may only ask that they accept the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, which he described as “substantially modernist but in a quiet way”.

The bishop, who caused uproar last year when he denied the existence of Nazi gas chambers, said for the SSPX such a deal “spelt danger”.

He said on his blog: “The rumour from Rome is precisely that [the Pope] is thinking of a Motu Proprio which would accept the SSPX ‘back into the Church’ once and for all, yet require from the SSPX no explicit acceptance of Vatican II or the New Mass, but only, for instance, the acceptance of John Paul II’s 1992 Catechism of the Catholic

Church. Thus the SSPX would not appear to its followers to be accepting the council or the new Mass, yet it would be softly, softly, beginning to go along with the substance of neo-modernism.”

Bishop Williamson, one of the four bishops illicitly ordained by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988, has repeatedly dismissed talks between the SSPX and Rome.

In January he said it would be a “dialogue of the deaf”

unless either “the SSPX becomes a traitor or Rome converts”.

His denial of the extent of the Holocaust last year was aired on Swedish television only days before the Pope lifted the excommunications of the bishops, including Bishop Williamson, ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre.

He was sacked as rector at an SSPX seminary in La Reja, Argentina, a post he had held for five years, and is now based in Wimbledon.

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A D H E 2 0 1 0 0 8

Nuns donate their brains for research

Comedian to speak in defence of celibacy

BY ED WEST

A GROUP of nuns in America has devised a novel way to live out the virtue of charity – by donating their brains to Alzheimer’s researchers.

Members of the Sisters of St Joseph in La Grange Park, near Chicago, are to donate their remains to the city’s Rush University in an attempt to help sufferers of the disease.

The Sisters are taking annual tests at the university, where they repeat numbers, name as many animals as they can in a minute, and listen to a 30-second story, before repeating it. When they die their brains will join 850 others in 38 cooling units in a laboratory at the school’s medical centre.

Rush University’s Religious Orders study began in 1993, and is one of a handful of studies nationwide that uses donated brains. Researchers hope to track cognitive decline in old age and identify risk factors for Alzheimer’s.

BY MARK GREAVES

COMEDIAN FRANK Skinner is to defend priestly celibacy alongside a Catholic bishop in a debate two days before the Pope’s visit.

Mr Skinner, a practising Catholic, will argue that celibacy should continue to be a requirement for Catholic priests. He will be joined by Bishop Malcolm McMahon of Nottingham,

Jack Valero, a spokesman for Opus Dei and for the Cause of Cardinal Newman, and Fr Stephen Wang, dean of studies at Allen Hall seminary.

They will be debating against theologian Tina Beattie, human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy and Carmelite Fr John McGowan.

The event, in the

Odeon London, will follow a screening of Conspiracy of Silence, about a priest who wishes to marry.

DON’T MISS: JACK VALERO ON THE ‘BIRMINGHAM THREE’ PAGE 12