The Pope’s visit will allow Britain to gain “fresh energy and inspiration” from its “rich Christian inheritance”, a leading Catholic said yesterday.
Pope Benedict XVI is arriving in Britain later this week for the first state visit by a Pontiff to the country.
Thousands of people are expected to line the routes in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the Pope during his four-day trip to Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Birmingham.
The Pope is scheduled to celebrate Masses, host a prayer vigil and beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman, the 19th century convert to Roman Catholicism in an open-air Mass in Cofton Park, Birmingham.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the Most Rev. Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, described the visit as an event of “great cultural and historic resonance”.
It will invite people to focus on the “Christian inheritance that lies at the heart of our culture and traditions”, the Archbishop of Westminster said.
“From this source there is much fresh energy and inspiration to be gained,” he wrote.
“When we forget, minimise or even reject this inheritance, then we risk losing our profound identity and creating a vacuum of values at the heart of our society.”
The Pope’s visit will include trips by “Popemobile” which are expected to attract thousands of onlookers.
The visit, beginning on Thursday in Edinburgh, comes 28 years after the six-day pastoral trip by Pope John Paul II to England, Scotland and Wales in 1982.
Pope Benedict will receive a state welcome from the Queen at Holyroodhouse Palace in the Scottish capital before travelling by Popemobile to the official residence of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh.
The Pope will travel to Glasgow later that day where he is scheduled to preside over a giant open air Mass at Bellahouston Park.
The Pontiff will fly to London on Thursday night to spend two days in the capital where he will meet schoolchildren and representatives of different faiths at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham.