FROM BRITAIN AND IRELAND NEWS


Kasper left behind after ‘Third World’ jibe


Christa Pongratz-Lippitt and Christopher Lamb


A SENIORcardinal caused uproar on the eve of the papal visit by describing Britain as a Third World country infected by an “aggressive neo-atheism”. Cardinal Walter Kasper, the former head of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, was asked in an interview why there was so much opposition to the Pope in Britain. “England is a secularised, pluralistic country nowadays. When you land at Heathrow, you sometimes feel as though you were in a Third World country,” he said. Cardinal Kasper withdrew from the papal


entourage after the interview was published amid speculation in Rome that his presence would be an embarrassment to the Pope. Cardinal Kasper also claimed in the inter-


view with German magazine Focus that Christians were persecuted in Britain. “An aggressive neo-atheism has spread,” he said. “If you wear a crucifix when you fly with BA you are discriminated against. But we want to show our faith in public. Everyone who knows England, knows that it also has a great Christian tradition. Europe would not be Europe if it could not preserve this tradition.” The interview was published on Monday


and Vatican officials discovered he had pulled out of the visit the following morning. The official explanation given was that he had hurt his foot. Cardinal Kasper is on record as saying that the Pope’s aim in visiting Britain


was to address dialogue with the Anglican Church and discuss avenues of cooperation. He stressed in the Focus interview that the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman by the Pope on Sunday should not pose ecu- menical difficulties. “I have discussed this matter several times with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to my surprise, he said that the beatification was a really big event for Anglo-Saxon culture,” he said. Meanwhile, writing in The Tablet,the Prime


Minister, David Cameron, denies suggestions that Britain is a secular country. “There has been a lot of exaggerated com- ment that Pope Benedict will this week be visiting a largely secular country,” he writes. “I do not agree with this and there is much evidence in polls and the attendance at reli-


Preparations are made at Cofton Park in Birmingham, where Pope Benedict will celebrate Mass and beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman on Sunday. Photo: AP/ Matt Dunham


gious services to contra- dict it. But in any case I believe such comment misses the point. The Pope’s visit should not just be welcomed by British


Catholics or people of faith more broadly but by all who welcome what faith groups con- tribute to our society.”


Speaking in a similar vein, the chairman of the Conservative Party, Baroness Warsi, on Wednesday signalled a new beginning for the relationship between the state, faith and soci- ety. In a speech to the College of Bishops of the Church of England in Oxford, she prom- ised a richer recognition of the Anglican and wider faith-based contribution to society. “We urgently need to rethink the way we think about faith in society. The challenges of the late twentieth century and early twenty- first century have revealed a world which is more religious than ever. It is a world where faith inspires, motivates and sustains,” she said. (See David Cameron, page 6.)


Coalition Government is more open to religion, says Nichols Catherine Pepinster


POPE BENEDICTwill find Britain has entered a new era with the coalition Government keen for faith to play a major role in society, Archbishop Vincent Nichols said this week. In an interview with The Tablet on


Wednesday, just before he left for Scotland and the arrival of the Pope in Edinburgh on Thursday morning, the Archbishop of Westminster said the Cameron Government was more open than its predecessor to religion. While the Labour Government developed a good working relationship with the Holy See on the world stage, there had been tension over domestic policies, he said. Labour’s attempt to force faith schools to


take quotas of non-religious pupils, which was thwarted, and its change to adoption


44 | THE TABLET | 18 September 2010


regulations, requiring Catholic adoption agen- cies to use same-sex couples as adoptive parents, soured relations with the Church. “Now it is a different pitch. They see faith as a major resource. There is cooperation at all levels now and the Government has a clear collective position,” said Archbishop Nichols. “With a different context, there are new oppor- tunities and a determination to find common ground and that is good,” he said. Like the Prime Minister David Cameron (see page 6), Archbishop Nichols rejects the view that Britain is a secular society and said he did not think the Pope would perceive it like that. “He pleads for a secularity that is positive and open to religious belief,” he said. Archbishop Nichols has been closely


involved in the planning of the visit, regularly providing background material to Vatican


officials. But he said that rather than draft text, he was asked for it in bullet point form – suggesting that he has not been called on to help draft the papal speeches. Polls for The Tablet, the BBC and ITN on


the eve of the visit have shown that most peo- ple believe the Church has dealt badly with the clerical sex-abuse scandal. On Wednesday, Channel 4 News was to broadcast a report saying that half the Catholic clerics jailed for abuse remain priests, despite the Nolan report recommending that anyone serving at least a year’s prison sentence should face laicisation. But Archbishop Nichols took a different line: “The media has reduced this to ‘this man should be banished’ but it is better to keep them and know exactly where they are,” he said. “We don’t want them … out in the wilder- ness doing we don’t know what.”


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