Pope Benedict XVI has officially landed in Edinburgh to begin a historic four-day state visit to Britain. The Pope’s arrival is the first ever state visit by a pope to the UK.
During the next four days, Pope Benedict is to first be greeting by the Duke of Edinburgh before gracing an audience with the Queen, afterwards taking in events in Glasgow and Birmingham. Ian Paisley has also arrived in Edinburgh this morning to champion victims of child abuse, a controversy the Pope has already described today as a ‘perversion’.
Preparations for the Pope’s visit have been largely overshadowed, however, by papal advisor Cardinal Walter Kasper’s recent remarks that Britain was a ‘third world country’ and that country was marked by aggressive atheism. The Vatican were quickly to distance themselves from Kasper’s divisive statements.
This evening an audience of 70,000 are expected to pile into the pontiff’s evening Papal mass in Glasgow. Police estimates state however, that the site may only be two-thirds full.
