IL PAPA

As I write, Pope Benedict is about to start his state visit of Britain and, in response, various celebrities - a catchall title that includes the likes of Stephen Fry and Philip Pullman - have written to the newspapers condemning said tour.

I hold no candle for the Pope but I do think that there is considerable irony in allowing, indeed encouraging, visits by Heads of State of countries that formally undertake violence against sections of their own population and yet protesting against one who, while he may have committed sins of omission in failing to seek out child abuse and, worse, in attempting to cover it when discovered, cannot be accused of sponsoring such horrific behaviour.

But perhaps the opprobrium should be the greater because Benedict is a spiritual rather than a political leader and there is therefore a sense in which he must be measured more stringently against a moral benchmark. So that would suggest that child abuse in Catholic schools is somehow worse than the mass murder of children at the Haut de la Garenne Orphanage in Jersey or worse than that caning schoolmaster who has recently been brought to book by a group of his formerly striped pupils?

No, despite the sensibilities of some and the (sometimes artificial) outrage of others, the Pope's visit should go ahead and it should do so for a series of pragmatic reasons.

First, a majority of British catholics would like the Pope to visit. Second he is the spiritual leader of something towards a billion and a half people. Third, how would it look to the populations of Brazil, Ireland, Paraguay even Poland (not to mention Italy) if he was blocked access to the UK just as if he was some rabble-rousing Mullah?

And fourth, this country has a long and colourful history of entertaining worse than him.