FROM BRITAIN AND IRELAND NEWS Papal visit costs Church £10m PHOTO: MAZUR/
WWW.THEPAPALVISIT.ORG.UK Christopher Lamb
POPE BENEDICT XVI’s visit to Britain has cost the Church more than its forecast of £10 million, but only slightly, documents released from the Foreign Office on Wednesday show. On 1 September 2010, just two weeks before
the Pope was due to arrive, the Government and the Church reached an agreement whereby the Foreign Office would pay a major- ity of the costs of the visit up front and would later be reimbursed by the Church. Under this agreement the Church has until 1 March to pay around £6.3m. On top of this figure, however, the Church in England, Wales and Scotland also paid £3.8m in costs it incurred independently. Originally, the Church said its side of the cost would be £7m; however, this figure crept upwards as the visit got closer. The figures show that both Church and State had to pay over £100,000 each on “pre-visit venue loca- tion and research costs” which includes the costs incurred for changing the venue of Cardinal Newman’s beatification from Coventry Airport to Cofton Park, Birmingham. In early September 2010, Archbishop Vincent Nichols said the Church’s final share of the cost would be “between £9 and 10m”. This week’s figures show that the actual cost was just 1 per cent above his top estimate. The final figure for the Church stands at £10.1m and the total cost of the visit for both State and Church £16.1 million. However,
this does not include the cost of policing which is being borne by the state. According to the documents, the major costs for the Church included £4.4m for the beatification Mass of Blessed John Henry Newman at Cofton Park – the high cost was due to the need to construct a stage and site from scratch; £1.1m for the prayer vigil at Hyde Park; and £385,000 for the education event at St Mary’s, Strawberry Hill. On the state’s side, the major cost was more than £3m for media centre facilities at all venues during the visit. Also, £17,000 was paid for accommodation for members of the papal entourage. The entourage, known as the “seguito”, stayed at the five-star Goring Hotel, Victoria, central London. Henry Bellingham, Undersecretary of State
for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, who released the figures, said in a statement this week: “The visit paved the way for further co- operation between the UK and the Holy See on a number of international issues where we share a common goal, including addressing the challenge of climate change, promoting multi-faith dialogue, as a means of working for peace in the world, and fighting poverty and disease.” The Church said it would repay the £6.3m
incurred by the Government on its behalf by the 1 March deadline. A statement issued by Papal Visit Ltd, the company set up by the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and that of Scotland, said it had raised a total
The Church paid more than £4 million to stage Cardinal Newman’s beatification
of £7.5m. A spokesman said the outstanding £2.6m would be taken up and underwritten by the dioceses, which would need to pay the money by October 2012. He added that most of the dioceses were in a good position to meet the outstanding costs as they had received a substantial rebate from the Mutual – an organi sation set up by the dioceses to provide insurance cover.
“It has been a tremendous achievement that we managed to keep the costs so low,” he said. Meanwhile, an initiative building on the success of the papal visit has been launched by the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, calling on Catholics to offer to pray for their colleagues and “proudly display symbols of their faith”. The guide, “Everyday Evangelising for Everyday Catholics”, gives practical tips about how to share faith and attract new Catholics.
Irish Catholics could become a ‘tiny minority’, warns cardinal
THE AMERICAN prelate leading the visita- tion to the Archdiocese of Dublin is expected to report to Pope Benedict XVI that the Church in Ireland is “on the edge” of a collapse, writes Sarah Mac Donald.
Widespread disillusionment over the clerical abuse scandals could lead the Church to shrink so that practising Catholics form a tiny minor- ity, according to Cardinal Sean O’Malley. The cardinal, who is one of several senior bishops leading the apostolic visitation into the Irish Church examining the problem of clerical sex abuse, made his comments when he met a group of clerics from the Catholic Priests Association. Fr Tony Flannery who was present at the
meeting recounted: “One of our delegation said to him, ‘Clearly the Church is in crisis in Ireland at the moment.’ The Cardinal then said, ‘Well I would put it stronger than that. I would say the Church in Ireland is on the
34 | THE TABLET | 19 February 2011
edge and that the next five to 10 years are going to be crucial.’ ” The cardinal is said to have added: “If we cannot meet the challenge now, the real dan- ger is that the Irish Church will become like all the other Churches in Western Europe with only a tiny minority of churchgoers.” Fr Flannery said he took Cardinal O’Malley’s remarks to mean that if the Irish Church did not face up to its problems quickly, it could totally disintegrate. “My understanding of what the cardinal said was that there is a real danger now that the Irish Church will implode on itself and become a tiny minority Church like other Western European Catholic Churches.” Fr Flannery said it was “made it clear to us that he realised the depth of the problem and the urgency of the situation”. Cardinal O’Malley also assured the group that he would report accurately what they
had told him about the circumstances of the Church in Ireland to Rome, and that it was then in the hands of the Pope. Last week, it was reported that Mass-going in the Archdiocese of Dublin had dropped to under 20 per cent, with some parishes at 3 per cent. The Church is also planning to hand over the control of a number of its primary schools to the state. ■ On Sunday, a Liturgy of Lament and Repentance for clerical sex abuse was due to be held in St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin at 3p.m. Cardinal Sean O’Malley and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin are to wash the feet of a group of abuse victims during the service. The liturgy will “ask the forgiveness of God and of all survivors for the failure of those church leaders and many others in the family of the Church to respond with love, integrity, honesty, understanding and com- passion to the pain and distress of survivors”.
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