Pope Benedict XVI announces visit to United Kingdom

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

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Pope Benedict XVI has announced that he will be coming to the United Kingdom in January 2010.

The information was announced that the Pope had accepted an invitation to visit the United Kingdom from Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The latter had visited the Vatican City three times and had invited the Pope to come to Great Britain in February 2009. Downing Street is expected to confirm the arrangements later today. This visit would make the first Papal visit to the UK since Pope John Paul II's visit in 1982. However, John Paul's visit was on a pastoral basis, so this is set to be the first state visit to the UK by a pope in that it is the first to follow an official invitation.

John Paul's six-day tour through England, Scotland and Wales was hugely popular, attracting hundreds of thousands of people from the Catholic religion. It became the first ever UK visit from the Pope, which will make Pope Benedict's visit the second papal one. John Paul's visit was likely to be cancelled due to the Falklands War and assasination attempts.

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Sources

"Pope to visit Britain in 2010" — BBC News Online, September 23, 2009
Patrick Wintour. "Pope accepts Gordon Brown's invitation to visit Britain next year" — Guardian.co.uk, September 23, 2009
Lesley Hussell. "Pope Benedict accepts Gordon Brown's invitation to visit Britain next year in first papal visit since 1982" — Mail Online, September 23, 2009
Andrew Porter. "Pope Benedict XVI to make official visit to Britain" — Telegraph.co.uk, September 23, 2009

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