UK Foreign Office memo on the Pope

The reports appearing in the UK Sunday papers referring to the leak of a UK Foreign Office internal memo connected with the forthcoming visit of Pope Benedict to the UK clearly make a mockery of the visit by the Pope and indeed of the Catholic Church that he represents.

The offhand remark by the British government that this was a "foolish" document may be so, but one commentator on Sky News posed the question as to whether such a memo does indeed reflect the general attitude of officialdom in Britain today. To compound matters it came from within a UK government department that considers itself to be the upper crust of UK civil service and indeed of the international foreign services.

This makes it even more despicable. Shame on them.