Austen Ivereigh

A short while ago at 6 45 pm UK time Pope Benedict XVI s Alitalia plane Shepherd One threaded its way into the lead skies above Birmingham Airport back to Rome after a brief departure ceremony in which the prime minister David Cameron told him that he had challenged the whole country to s

COFTON PARK BIRMINGHAM ENGLAND The Mass of the Beatification of Cardinal Newman has just ended Newman is beatified This was the Pope s final large-scale event and it was another triumph He has not put a foot wrong and the newspapers this morning are all wondering how he did it By our apo

BIRMINGHAM England Bill Kilgallon chairman of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission of England and Wales gave a briefing to journalists shortly before the beginning of Mass here about the meeting which took place yesterday — the first of its kind — between the Pope and safeguarding

If Pope Benedict is half as tired as I now feel at the end of the vigil in London s Hyde Park he will sleep well tonight — after another punishing schedule at the close of his triumphant UK visit The Vigil — which managed to resist being termed Pope in the Park — was moving powerful and pr

Pope Benedict XVI s four-day visit to the UK has so far been one long argument — demonstrated in words deeds and symbolism — against the secularist attempt to drive out faith from the public square But the argument has been accompanied by a call — to Catholics to take their place in that square

At a Mass at Westminster Cathedral Pope Benedict has just spoken these words in his homily — some of the strongest yet expressed on clerical sex abuse ldquo Here too I think of the immense suffering caused by the abuse of children especially within the Church and by her ministers Above all I e

WESTMINSTER I ve just come out from Pope Benedict XVI s address to representatives of civil society in Parliament s Westminster Hall feeling like I ve witnessed a genuine historical moment The Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow told the Pope that what was once thought inconceiv

TWICKENHAM Pope Benedict s UK campaign against secularism has continued this morning at a Catholic university college in south-west London where he has given three addresses which amplified the clear theme of this visit — that pluralism depends on opening up to faith The first speech this morni

The Pope has continued with the argument he wants to have with British secularism at a joyous outdoor Mass attended by 70 000 in Bellahouston Park in Glasgow Scotland — reprising a phrase which has come to define his pontificate nbsp The evangelization of culture is all the more important in our

British humanists have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict lumping together atheism and Nazism in his speech at Edinburgh As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the 20th century let us never forget how the exclusion of God religion and virtue from public life leads ul