UK Catholic Community Urged to Join Make Poverty History Rally in Edinburgh

The Make Poverty History rally is scheduled to take place in Edinburgh on 2nd July 2005. Recently Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor joined the campaign as he has urged Catholics over England and Wales to join him at the rally.

He will lead the rally with the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Cardinal Keith O'Brien and will urge the G8 leaders to fulfil the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Also, it is likely the two cardinals will celebrate Mass on 2nd July evening after the rally, although this has not yet been confirmed.

The events connected to the G8 summit are attracting the attention of the broad international public. Calls for change of G8 politics regarding poverty, famine and disease, especially in Africa, have been heard widely among people all over the world.

In support of the event, the series of Live 8 concerts will be held simultaneously in London, Paris, Philadelphia, Berlin and Rome on 2nd July. However, a concert has also now been announced to take place in Edinburgh on 6th July - the first day of the G8 summit.

As organisers announced on Tuesday, Annie Lennox, Dido and Travis are among those who will perform at the Edinburgh concert.

Edinburgh officials expressed secutiry worries as such a huge number of people are expected to join the rally and concert.

However, the organisers described the rally and concert as a peaceful celebration. Scottish singer-songwriter Midge Ure commented the officials' statement: "We know the type of people who will come. I'm bringing my family--it will be families, it will be people who believe in the cause."

"The followers of Christ cannot be deaf to [the call of the poor]," said Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor in BBC Radio 4's Sunday Worship.

"The agonies of Africa, and of so many other parts of the world, are also our agonies. We each of us have a God-given dignity. Yet we do not arrive at our potential on our own. We need to be freed from what oppresses us - the oppression of grinding poverty, of exploitation, of despair."