London, UK - A new website detailing Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain next September has been set up by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales.
http://www.thepapalvisit.org.uk promises regular updates on the four day visit, which begins with the Pope meeting the Queen at Holyrood House in Edinburgh, includes a public Mass in Glasgow and culminates with Benedict XVI beatifying at a Mass in Coventry, the Venerable John Henry Newman, Victorian England’s most famous convert to Roman Catholicism.
He will also deliver a public lecture in London, and lead a prayer vigil. Full details of the visit, costing an estimated £15 million, will be released nearer the dates, (September 16 – 19), the Foreign Office announced yesterday at a joint press conference with the Church.
Discussions are currently underway over the precise contribution of the Catholic Church to the visit, said the Secretary for Scotland, Jim Murphy. He added that the cost of the G20 gathering, minus policing had totalled "about nineteen million for the one day."
The Church is pay for the pastoral events during the four-day visit, the first made by a Pope to Britian which has a status equivalent to a State visit. He will stay in Church properties rather than, as is the norm with most visiting heads of State, palaces belonging to the Royal family. The trip made by Pope John Paul II to Britain in 1982 was a pastoral visit to the Catholic Church in this country.