Popes visit shows faith groups still important, says Patten

Chris Patten has hailed the Pope’s visit to Britain as “historic” and proof that faith groups and the Catholic Church are still relevant today.

Patten, who oversaw arrangements for the papal visit, said the sight of the Pope standing side by side with the Queen and the turnout of all generations and ethnicities to see him represented the extent to which Catholics in the UK are not a minority but “part of the mainstream of public life in every sector”.

The Pope flew back to Rome last night after his four-day visit to Britain, the first ever official state visit by a pontiff to Britain and the first visit by a pope since John Paul II made a pastoral visit in 1982.

His gruelling schedule included celebrating three open air masses in Glasgow, London and Birmingham, an address to politicians at Westminster, and meetings with Church leaders and representatives of other faiths.

The open air mass in Birmingham’s Crofton Park saw the beatification of 19th century Cardinal John Henry Newman, a convert from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, and the first beatification to take place in Britain.

Patten said the Pope’s visit reflected the fact that Britain “still has important Christian roots”.
He said: “There is a secular culture and consumerism sometimes seems king but, for many people, faith is what helps them through the day.

“One sign of the Pope's relevance is the numbers who turned out to greet him, not just at the events but from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and in London, the roads were lined with people who wanted to cheer him.”

He added: “The Pope’s visit has shown that faith groups in general and the Catholic church in particular are relevant today.”

Patten said the Pope’s speeches had challenged Britons to realise that “other things matter” and given them a sense in which the state of the nation could not be judged simply by per capita GDP figures.

He said he hoped the visit would make people think deeper about the sort of society they wanted to live in and their social responsibilities.

“I hope it will make us realise we need a serious dialogue between religious and secular groups,” he said.

“I hope it will give people of all faiths more self confidence to stand up for themselves and to make the point that faith matters to society.”

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Britain’s response to the Pope’s visit had been “very, very positive”.

“Many people were listening with profound interest to what the Pope had to say and demonstrated joy in listening to him and to his message,” he said.

“We have seen that there were critics, but we have seen more times that there were people who were happy and, in this sense, we find that it was very, very positive, the way in which the Pope has been received here.”

Bishop Paul Butler, one of the Church of England bishops present at the joint service in Westminster Abbey on Friday, said the coming together of bishops from the two Churches had been “significant”.

“We share a common agreement about the dangers of secularisation, and the issue of the marginalisation of Christianity, and faith more generally,” he said.

“We are equally committed to the reality that faith has to be a public matter and cannot be relegated to the private sphere.”

He added: “The symbolic act of being together … does make it plain that the things that unite us are stronger than those which divide us.

“Our common commitment to Jesus Christ is made known in our land, and that we stay true to our Christian roots and values.”

The Evangelical Alliance said the Pope’s visit had paved the way for Christians to play an even greater role in supporting Britain’s poor and needy in the wake of big cuts in government spending.

It welcomed the Pope’s message defending Britain’s Christian heritage and speaking out against “aggressive forms of secularisation”.