The Catholic Heralds leading article on the funding of the Papal Visit to Britain…

This newspaper believes that a state visit will be very difficult to arrange successfully, and not just because the Foreign Office has compromised its professional standards. The event has become a political football: in the second leaders’ debate, Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg all welcomed it but expressed disagreement with Catholic teaching. Moreover, the fact that this would be the first state visit to Britain by a Pope – John Paul II made a purely pastoral visit in 1982 – means that the taxpayer will foot much of the bill. Secularists, backed by the media, can therefore complain that their money is being used to celebrate an organisation they loathe (though Catholics also pay taxes). Their plans to disrupt the occasion are already advanced.

There is one relatively simple route out of this minefield, and that is to make the Pope’s visit a pastoral rather than a state one. After all, its main focus – the beatification of John Henry Newman – is primarily a Catholic event; and one could argue that, by offering his pastoral guidance to an embattled Church, the Holy Father will achieve far more than by taking part in a state-funded public relations exercise. We hope it is not too late for the organisers of the visit to consider a radically different course of action better suited to these disturbing times.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/features/opinion/o0000366.shtml

The British Humanist Association is a founding member of the Protest the Pope campaign which is organising events this year to protest the state visit.