While the German tabloid, Die Bild Zeitung, has enthusiastically decorated its Berlin HQ with the world’s largest Pope poster (18 stories high), German newspapers report that tens of thousands of protestors will greet the Pope today. Nearly 100 German parliamentarians, mainly from the Leftist Social Democrat Party and the Green party, intend to boycott Benedict’s speech to Germany’s Bundestag, the lower house, because they claim his speech goes against the country’s separation of Church and state. But organisers have said that they’ve had more people asking for tickets for the Holy Father’s speech in the German parliament than people cancelling. After the two German atheistic totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, Berlin’s religiosity is unsurprisingly low: two thirds of Berlin’s inhabitants have no religious affiliation.

Pope Benedict’s three main stops on this visit mark interesting moments in Germany’s Catholic history. Berlin, city of museums and memorials, is the obvious testament to Germany’s inglorious 20th-century history. But it is also a very young diocese, founded in 1930 after the Prussian Concordat. The concordat was a document negotiated by Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, which allowed for the formation of more Catholic dioceses in Protestant Prussia. Although the archdiocese has only a small amount of Catholic faithful, its establishment marked the end of restrictive measures against Catholics which followed Bismarck’s bitter culture wars against the Catholic Church after Germany’s unification in 1871.

One of Berlin’s first bishops, Konrad Cardinal von Preysing, a sometimes pedantic but brave Bavarian diplomat and lawyer, described the Berliner Catholics as “unemotional and tough” when he arrived. They proved to be some of the most courageous and outspoken Catholics in the face of National Socialism.

It is perhaps apt that the Pope should meet representatives of the German Lutheran Churches in Erfurt for the ecumenical leg of his trip. Erfurt is perhaps one of Germany’s youngest dioceses, founded after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and is predominantly Protestant. Martin Luther studied at the University of Erfurt and joined an Augustinian canonry there. Catholics and Protestants celebrate a joint-”MartinsTag” on November 10, to mark the Feast of St Martin de Tours and the anniversary of Martin Luther’s birth. The dialogue between the Catholic and German Protestant Churches has worsened over the years, with poor relations hitting a low point last year when Dr Margot Kaessmann, the former head of the Lutheran churches, called for Catholics to embrace contraception during an ecumenical meeting in Munich.

The Pope’s last stop, in the Archdiocese of Freiburg, also resonates. He is the first pope to visit Freiburg since the deposed pope fled from Konstanz to Freiburg in 1415. The region, which incorporates the former Protestant Grand-Duchy of Baden, is mixed Catholic and Protestant, but accounts for about two million of Germany’s 24 million Catholics and is Germany’s second largest archdiocese. Baden was one of the sites of the German culture war’s first battles between the Catholic Church and ruling Protestant powers. Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops’ Conference is the bishop of the diocese.

Here the Holy Father is due to meet the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZDK), a coalition of lay Catholics involved in diocesan councils, parish councils and other aspects of lay ministry. The group is recognised by the German Bishops’ Conference. Alois Glueck, the president of the ZDK, called for the end of priestly celibacy last year and the group has been in favour of the ordination of women.

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Pope Benedict XVI will also meet victims of clergy sexual abuse during his visit this week. Germany was shaken by an unfolding abuse scandal in January last year which caused countless Germans already alienated from the Church to leave it officially.

Questions about the visit’s cost, which is being carried by the Catholic Church in Germany, the Pope’s legitimacy and controversial issues such as the use of contraception and the ordination of women have all been aired in the public arena. The fault lines in a Church with a liberal establishment, low rates of practice and a conservative grassroots movement are beginning to show. The Holy Father’s visit is bound to be interesting.

The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP) will establish its first house in England and Wales in Church of Ss Peter and Paul, New Brighton, later this year.

Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury and the institute’s general prior, Mgr Gilles Wach, agreed to establish the foundation in the church, which was closed amid protests three years ago.

Under the auspices of the traditionalist institute, Ss Peter and St Paul’s will become a centre for the Extraordinary Form Mass. Mgr Wach’s institute, headquartered in Gricigliano, near Florence, was given pontifical approval as a Society of Apostolic Life in 2008 and celebrates the sacraments according to the older form of the Roman Rite.

They currently have no houses in England and Wales, but send over priests from Belgium to say Sunday Mass in four English dioceses.

Bishop Davies was approached by the institute last year and met Mgr Wach after Easter to negotiate establishing the foundation. He also consulted with his fellow bishops in the North of England, the Patrimony Committee of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, and English Heritage about the Church’s future.

He re-opened the Dome of Home, as the Wirral Church is known, earlier this year after his predecessor closed it in 2008 as being too large and too costly to maintain.

After a concerted campaign by parishioners, the Vatican ruled in 2009 that the then Bishop Brian Noble had failed to follow the correct canonical procedure when closing the church. It later withdrew the ruling when it was assured that the parish’s move to a nearby Anglican parish was temporary.

A diocesan spokesman said: “The members of the institute will work in close collaboration with Fr Philip Moor, the parish priest of the Parish of the Holy Apostles and Martyrs, since it is the wish of Bishop Davies that this shrine church will express the harmony between the two usages of the one Roman Rite.

“As the Holy Father, Pope Benedict, reminded us in his 2007 Moto Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, ‘there is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal’, it is the sincere hope of the bishop that this establishment will foster reconciliation at the heart of the Church: one of the express aims of the 2007 papal document.

“Finally, the foundation will ensure that the patrimony of the church building so dear to Catholics and other members of the local community is secured and continues to bear witness to the faith and mission of the Church.”

For over a year Masses have been celebrated in the former dining room of the presbytery, turned into a chapel surrounded by the dust, noise and rubble of builders. Regulars who remember the dingy grey carpet, the peeling William Morris wallpaper in the apse, the grime-encrusted gilt capitals of the grey-green pilasters and faint odours of urine and mould, will not recognise the light, beautiful and clean church when it opens its doors next week.
It comes as a relief for Fr Alexander Sherbrooke, the parish priest, after a year of living in a building site, battles with Crossrail and an even bigger battle to raise over £3 million from private donors and trusts to restore a building that was falling down around him. He hopes that the church’s new beauty will show the beauty of the Eucharist and attract people to Christ.

A tall, energetic man with a shock of wiry, anthracite grey hair that stands upright, Fr Sherbrooke took over St Patrick’s nine years ago. Like many urban parishes, St Patrick’s had seen an exodus of regular parishioners as the residents of the West End moved out of London into the suburbs in the 1980s. His first move in the parish was to set up regular Eucharistic Adoration.

“In an area where there is tremendous darkness,” Fr Sherbrooke says, “there is a need to let the light of the Lord shine out. I believed that through Eucharistic Adoration God was going to show us how to use the parish and that it was necessary for it to grow.

“When you are confronted with a secular society which is very rich, prosperous and sophisticated you have to confront it with Eucharistic love, the life and simplicity of poverty.”

He says that the parish’s other activities all flow out of the encounter with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Alongside Eucharistic Adoration, Fr Sherbrooke speaks of a special devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the mercy which flows from the wounds of the Crucifixion. He points out that St Claude de la Colombière, St Margaret Mary Alacoque’s confessor, first promoted the modern devotion to the Sacred Heart in England while he was at the Court of St James. These days an annual Marian procession takes place on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception from Soho Square down to the French Church in Leicester Square, and several hundred people join the Corpus Christi procession which wends its way to the graveyard of St Giles where 10 English martyrs are buried. Young students at St Patrick’s Evangelisation School (the acronym spells SPES, “hope” in Latin) go out and engage in street evangelisation, talking to people about the faith, offering prayers and sometimes miraculous medals. Once a week at Open House the homeless gather at the church to get some supper and companionship. The evening includes scripture readings and extempore prayer. The project is funded entirely by the goodwill of sponsors and what money the church can raise through concerts and cake sales. A Cenacolo prayer group supporting people who suffer from drug addiction meets regularly and perpetual Adoration has been a constant feature in the parish.

The renovated St Patrick’s has a beautiful marble-clad apse, an altar where both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite can be celebrated and a new baptistery chapel which houses a relic image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The church will also receive relics of St Claude de la Colombière. The subterranean warren underneath the church has also been renovated, with a large community room that will be the new home for Open House, an industrial-sized kitchen, offices, classrooms and a prayer room.

Fr Sherbrooke alludes to Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical Deus Caritas Est when he describes the renovation work that has taken place. He says: “The more we are drawn to the agape of the love of the Lord as we see it displayed in the Crucifixion and the suffering of Christ, the more we are called to share in the works of mercy. So, on the ground floor, in the church, you have Eucharistic Adoration, but underneath it are the rooms in which the corporal works of mercy are going on.”

Quoting Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, who is one of his role models, he says: “If I’d been a social worker I’d have given up long ago. We do the work because we meet Jesus in the poorest of the poor.” He believes that the encounters with Christ in the poor and the encounters with Christ in the Eucharist in Mass or at Adoration complement each other.

“When we are with the poor, we touch Jesus. We can learn about Jesus in books, we can hear wonderful sermons and teachings but it is when Jesus comes to us in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor that we are closest to Him and that is intimately bound up with Eucharistic life. The poverty that is the Eucharistic bread is Christ. He is not in a whopping great Bentley in a West End club but in bread. He deliberately humbles Himself to come among us in the most poor way possible. That’s why the deeper our Eucharistic communion with Christ through Mass and Adoration, the more we are going to want to go and meet him in our broken brothers and sisters.”

Fr Sherbrooke also believes the contemporary world has much to learn about God from the poor and disadvantaged.

“As I walk around the West End and chat with people, particularly those hanging around the streets, they are all so empty. They are surrounded by all these rich people walking past discussing the future of the world on their mobile phones but they are closest to the God who loves them because God is able to fill their emptiness with his unconditional love,” says Fr Sherbrooke. “If you are running IBM your world is full of strategic planning and appraisals and how to move the next product on, you’ve got no room for God. So in fact the poor are the ones who can teach us what it means to truly know Him and to love Him.”

Making a virtue out of necessity, he wants to use the virtual parish, the fact that he has no stable residential congregation, as a place where people can discover the Church away from home. Most people who work in London spend much of their day in the city centre, where they then socialise after work. Home, Fr Sherbrooke says, can literally just mean returning to your bedroom to recharge batteries before heading out to work again.

To reach out to people who might be discovering the Church by walking into St Patrick’s, Fr Sherbrooke would like to station a priest at the back of the church from Monday to Friday for an hour between three and four every afternoon. The priest would simply be a presence if people wanted to talk or have their Confession heard.

Following Pope Benedict’s focus on beauty, Fr Sherbrooke’s plans for evangelisation include art and music. The Scottish composer James McMillan is composing a choral setting for the Magnificat, which will be sung at St Patrick’s opening Mass and the church’s grey organ is being restored.

Meanwhile, Fr Sherbrooke is still looking to raise the money for six stained-glass windows which have been specially designed for St Patrick’s and have been approved by the diocese and the historic churches commission. They feature saints who “really express love and mercy made present in St Patrick’s” and include St Damien of Molokai, the patron saint for lepers and HIV/Aids sufferers, St Thérèse of Lisieux and St Francis of Assisi. The rose window, which is the central feature, will show the crucifixion with the Virgin Mary and St John at the foot of the cross to “give witness to fact that it is the mercy that flows from the cross of Jesus that informs the work that we do”, he explains.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster is coming to celebrate the first Mass in the renovated church and the Australian Cardinal George Pell of Sydney will be celebrating Mass for the Feast of the Ascension two days later. George Weigel, Pope John Paul II’s biographer, will speak about “Benedict XVI and the Future of the West”. Their presence bears witness to St Patrick’s importance in the project of the new evangelisation; a quiet beacon radiating hope through the dark alleys of Soho.

Divine Office Week II

Sunday, May 29: Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; Ps 66; 1 Pt 3:15-18; Jn 14:15-21
Monday, May 30: Weekday of Easter
Acts 16:11-15; Ps 149; Jn 15:26—16:4a
Tuesday, May 31: The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Zep 3:14-18a; Isaiah 12:2-3, 4bcd, 5-6; Lk 1:39-56
Wednesday, June 1: St Justin, martyr
Acts 17:15, 22-18:1; Ps 148; Jn 16:12-15
Thursday, June 2: Weekday of Easter or Ss Marcellinus and Peter, martyrs
Acts 1:1-11; Ps 47; Eph 1:17-23
Friday, June 3: Ss Charles Lwanga and companions, martyrs
Acts 18:9-18; Ps 47; Jn 16:20-23
Saturday, June 4: Weekday of Easter
Acts 18:23-28; Ps 47; Jn 16:23b-28

Extraordinary Form

Sunday, May 29: Fifth Sunday after Easter
James 1:22-27; John 16:23-30
Monday, May 30: Feria
Readings of Fifth Sunday after Easter repeated
Tuesday, May 31: Queenship of Our Lady
Ecclesiasticus 24:5-11, 30, 31: Luke 1:26-33
Wednesday, June 1: Vigil of the Ascension
Ephesians 4:7-13; John 17:1-11
Thursday, June 2: The Ascension of Our Lord
Acts 1:1-11; Mark 16:14-20
Friday, June 3: Feria
Readings of yesterday repeated
Saturday, June 4: St Francis Caracciolo confessor
Wisdom 4:7-14; Luke 12:35-40

Compiled by Gordon Dimon, Senior MC of the Latin Mass Society

The bishops discussed the possibility of restoring two of the three Holy Days of Obligation, which were transferred to Sundays in 2006, at their first plenary meeting of the year.
They will spend the next six months in their dioceses “reflecting” about whether to celebrate the Holy Days on their customary days.

The days which were transferred were the Epiphany on January 6, the Ascension of Our Lord which is traditionally celebrated on a Thursday 40 days after Easter, and the Body and Blood of the Lord, known as Corpus Christi, celebrated after Pentecost.

Speaking after the bishops’ meeting in Leeds Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, who leads the bishops’ conference, said: “We reflected about the two Holy Days that have such a traditional resonance about them, the Epiphany and the Ascension, and we as a bishops’ conference have determined to reflect a little bit more on this.

“We explored both sides of the aspect of what Holy Days mean in Catholic life. They are a point at which we concentrate and celebrate liturgically a particularly important part of the mystery of our salvation.

“And the placing of those Holy Days on a Sunday is to enable our participation and celebration of the holy day.

“On the other hand the Epiphany and the Ascension are still part of the rhythm of many people’s lives in this country and so we are weighing up how we stand on those two arguments and bishops have gone away ready to listen to their priests and their people as to what is to be best gained, either by marking those two days in the rhythm of the calendar or with the advantages of an easier and fuller liturgical celebration of them on a Sunday.”

A spokeswoman for the bishops explained that “each of the bishops will be reflecting about the pastoral needs within their dioceses, and the bishops’ conference collectively will return to the issue of celebrating these feast days at their next plenary meeting in November”.

When the bishops made the decision to move the Holy Days in 2006, Catholics protested against the move with a petition. Julia Ashenden, who launched the petition, said she managed to get over 500 signatures online.

She said she also received a number of emails saying that the petition had the support of parishioners who were unable to use computers.

An earlier attempt to move Holy Days in 1996 had been quashed after priests and lay people protested, but Mrs Ashenden’s petition did not seem to make a difference.

She said she was pleased to hear that the bishops were considering returning Holy Days to their original days.

Mrs Ashenden said: “I would be delighted if Epiphany and Ascension Day were restored to their proper days, especially as the Orthodox Church celebrates its Christmas on the Epiphany.

“This year was a nonsense, with Epiphany being kept by the Catholic Church on January 2. The Anglicans always keep Ascension Day on the Thursday, 40 days on from Easter of course.”

Fr Peter Newby, a priest in the City of London, said his church continued to be well attended on the days that the transferred Holy Days were originally celebrated.

He said he would be “delighted” if they restored the Holy Days because “it’s one of the ways this parish is made known throughout the City because people look for places to celebrate Mass on the Holy Days”.

“It’s good generally because I think all the reasons given for moving them were largely negative; that people don’t go to Mass on Holy Days and that sort of thing. It’s a bit like playing bridge, you play to strength rather than to weakness,” he added.

Fr Tim Finigan, the parish priest of Our Lady of the Rosary, Blackfen, and a popular blogger, said that Ascension and Epiphany would be the obvious Holy Days to bring back because of their places in the liturgical calendar.

Fr Finigan said: “They form part of the complex structure of the liturgical year. Many people were disappointed when the days were transferred, especially the Epiphany.
“Here in Britain we still have the tradition of the 12 days of Christmas, it’s one of those things, like Christmas, which still have a cultural resonance. I’d be delighted if those Holy Days were restored.”

The Church in England and Wales has seven other days during the year on which Catholics are required to go to Mass, other than fulfilling their Sunday obligation. That is one more Holy Day than the United States, Ireland and Poland.

Australia and the Netherlands only observe two, while the Vatican City observes all 10 Holy Days.

Addressing a group of liturgists who were meeting for the Ninth International Congress on the Liturgy, organised by the Pontifical Liturgical Institute of Rome’s St Anselm Pontifical Athenaeum, the Pope said: “The liturgy of the Church goes beyond the ‘conciliar reform’, the objective of which in fact was not mainly to change the rites and texts but rather to renew the mentality and to put the celebration of Christ’s Paschal Mystery at the centre of Christian life and pastoral work.

“Unfortunately the liturgy has perhaps been seen – even by us, pastors and experts – more as an object to reform than a subject capable of renewing Christian life, seeing that ‘a very close and organic bond exists between the renewal of the liturgy and the renewal of the whole life of the Church’.”

“The liturgy … lives a proper and constant relationship between sound ‘traditio’ and legitimate ‘progressio’, clearly seen by the conciliar constitution Sancrosanctum Concilium at paragraph 23 … Not infrequently are tradition and progress in awkward opposition. Actually though, the two concepts are interwoven: tradition is a living reality that, in itself, includes the principle of development, of progress”.

The conference, entitled “The Pontifical Liturgical Institute: Between Memory and Prophecy” spanned over three days and focused on the legacy of the liturgy of the past 50 years, really since the Second Vatican Council. Speakers included liturgical luminaries like the electric guitar-playing Abbot Primas Notker Wolf of the Confederation of Benedictines, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski and veteran liturgist Fr Matias Augé CMF. It also featured a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the Emeritus Archbishop of Brussels-Mechelen – a diocese where most people remain seated during the consecration and the churches are pretty empty.

Fr Augé and the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had a heated letter exchange about the Extraordinary Form in the mid-1990s, in which Fr Augé made a case against the “re-instatement” of the 1962 Missal. Fr Augé was essentially objecting then to what has become one of the key points of Benedict’s papacy where liturgy is concerned, namely the “reform of the reform” and the “hermeneutic of reform” which provides renewal and continuity.

In the spirit of the reform of the reform, Pope Benedict liberated the use of the 1962 Missal with his 2007 Motu Proprio Summorum pontificum in the hope of mutual enrichment of the newer liturgy as well as the older liturgy.

It is interesting to note that next week, the Angelicum will host a massive conference entitled “Summorum Pontificum: a Hope for the Church“. It could not be more different than the congress described above. Four years after the publication of the Motu Proprio, the older form of the Mass has quietly entered the mainstream. Speakers here include hard hitters of the reform of the reform including the Kazakh Bishop Athanasius Schneider whose book on the Eucharist has been much vaunted, the new head of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch, who will speak about ecumenical points, and the head of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares-Llovera.

Such a mainstream conference was unthinkable four years ago, but now it has come to pass without much fuss. The reform of the reform is happening. I think it is unlikely that the Extraordinary Form of the Mass will ever be very widely used, but it is good to have it, because its liberation has, slowly, slowly meant a more reverent celebration of the newer form of the Mass. Last Sunday’s Mass at St Peter’s for the beatification of Pope John Paul II was a wonderful example of the reform of the reform at work. It was a sort of tribute to the late pope’s simplicity of taste, being less elaborate than Benedict’s normal Masses but with the new Pope’s appreciation of reverence (Credo III and simple Latin hymns).

And, after the beatification ceremony was concluded and the Mass really began, the faithful were politely asked to refrain from clapping and waving flags during the consecration. The Mass proceeded reverently and prayerfully, despite the million plus people who had come out for the new Beatus.

Benedict XVI beatified his predecessor in front of over a million pilgrims who had gathered in St Peter’s Square and other piazzas surrounding the Vatican.

Benedict XVI said the Polish pope had opened society, culture, political and economic systems to Christ, “turning back with the strength of a titan—a strength which came to him from God—a tide which appeared irreversible”.

He said: “By his witness of faith, love and apostolic courage, accompanied by great human charisma, this exemplary son of Poland helped believers throughout the world not to be afraid to be called Christian, to belong to the Church, to speak of the Gospel. In a word: he helped us not to fear the truth, because truth is the guarantee of liberty. To put it even more succinctly: he gave us the strength to believe in Christ, because Christ is Redemptor hominis, the Redeemer of man.”

At the beginning of the Mass on St Peter’s Square, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the vicar general of the diocese of Rome and the postulator of Blessed John Paul II’s cause, asked the Pope to declare the late pope a “Beatus” or Blessed. The Holy Father replied by reading the decree of beatification and naming Blessed John Paul II’s feast day on October 22.

Pilgrims who stood in the streaming sunlight after nights outdoors and endless queues cheered and clapped when the Pope pronounced the decree.

The normal five-year waiting period after a holy person’s death was waived after four million people came to Rome during the week in which Pope John Paul II was buried in 2005, allowing the late pontiff to be fast-tracked to beatification. The testimony of a French nun, Sister Marie Simon Pierre, who was inexplicatbly cured of her Parkinson’s disease after praying for Blessed John Paul’s intercession, advanced the cause of his beatification. Another miracle which cannot be explained by science must be attributed to him if he is to be canonised.

Drawing on the Gospel of the day—Divine Mercy Sunday, instituted by Blessed John Paul II—Benedict spoke about the beatitude of faith which Christ gave Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”. He said the beatification made this Gospel particularly striking “because we are gathered to celebrate a beatification, but even more so because today the one proclaimed blessed is a Pope, a Successor of Peter, one who was called to confirm his brethren in the faith. John Paul II is blessed because of his faith, a strong, generous and apostolic faith.”

The Pope added that Blessed John Paul II “directed Christianity once again to the future, the future of God, which transcends history while nonetheless directly affecting it. He rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress. He restored to Christianity its true face as a religion of hope, to be lived in history in an ‘Advent’ spirit, in a personal and communitarian existence directed to Christ, the fullness of humanity and the fulfillment of all our longings for justice and peace.”

Pope Benedict seemed also to address the suggestion that his predecessor had turned his back on the innovations of the Second Vatican Council, a criticism which has been levelled against the late pope. He spoke of Blessed John Paul’s role in spreading the message “that man is the way of the Church, and Christ is the way of man”, which he said it was one of the great legacies of the council. A number of Blessed John Paul II’s critics believe he did not do enough to stop the abuse of children by priests.

This is only the second time since Pope Benedict has presided over a beatification since he returned to an older format which meant that new blesseds were declared in their dioceses by local bishops instead of in Rome, where Blessed John Paul II personally beatified several hundred people. Pope Benedict beatified Blessed John Henry Newman in Birmingham last year.

I was offered a privileged seat which was a tribute to the relationships and from within the choir therefore I was able to share quite profoundly what was a really solemn moment. I think what struck me were the two points at which the crowd cheered right at the heart of the abbey. It was very remarkable when it happened. The first [instance] was when the two exchanged their promises. So when Catherine said ‘I will’ there was a great cheer. People recognised the solemnity of the promises that were being made. The second was when the Archbishop of Canterbury said ‘So in the sight of God and these people I now declare you man and wife’ and there was a great cheer.

There is popular recognition that marriage is a fresh start. That this from now on was something different and it was a profound change in the life of both those young people. And everybody recognises it. I think that gives lie to the idea that marriage is of little consequence in our society. It clearly is of great consequence in the eyes of people witnessing and taking part in that marriage yesterday.

What does tomorrow mean for you?

Tomorrow, in a way, is a celebration of the same love that William and Catherine promised to each other–yesterday in marriage, today in service of priest, bishop and Pope–but it’s the same well-spring of love that comes from God that we see on both days.

Clearly with John Paul, it’s a recognition of love that found a mature expression. We look back on that and say without doubt this is an exemplary of living the gift of the spirit of love. That is what a beatification means: Here is a model of Christian loving and of what Christian living means for us. I suppose in the heart of John Paul’s witness, I would place the virtue of courage. I think his very first words on election, on coming out on the balcony were, ‘Do not be afraid’.

He showed that courage right through his life as a young man, as an actor, as somebody preparing for priesthood, as a bishop; in conditions of great adversity he showed that courage. He showed the same courage as Pope, a bishop and a Christian. He said ‘Do not be afraid to let Christ into your lives’, into the realm of politics, into the realm of international relations.

In fact it was the cry that was echoed by Pope Benedict when he was inaugurated when he said, ‘By letting Christ into our lives we lose absolutely nothing’. It is that courage that overcomes fear, and certainly in the life of John Paul II, very visibly overcame the fear of illness, incapacity and death. For me, he would be the fearless one.

Do you have any personal memories of John Paul II that stand out for you?

He had a great sense of humour. I remember at one of the meetings of the synod of bishops when I was an assistant secretary or something in the synod hall the cardinals wd be sitting in the front two rows and on the Wednesday session I think a lot of the cardinals assumed that the Pope wouldn’t be present and they were missing. There were empty rows. At the break John Paul stood up and he tapped the microphone. He said: ‘As my old philosophy tutor used to say, I can see the absentees.’

More specifically, what does Pope John Paul II’s beatification mean for England and Wales?

I don’t think anybody who was present for his visit in 1982 will ever forget it. It was quite different to the recent visit of Pope Benedict, because that was a visit that was focused primarily on the Catholic community and the celebration of sacraments. But his trip ran through England Scotland and Wales. It was remarkable for the vigour and the panache with which he made the Catholic life and truth and celebration so present in the heart of our country and the different places that he visited. There was that vigour and style that he had and also his stamina, because it was a remarkable tour de force which he showed in many, many countries, where he could hold huge crowds, time after time after time.

I spent a lot of our visit in the BBC television centre and I know the people who were there were quite astonished, not just by the charismatic presence that he had but by the fact that he could sustain this for nine days. He was very clearly drawing on strength that was virtually unquenchable and that came across as a huge encouragement to people spiritually, especially to young people.

There has been criticism of his legacy, especially on questions of abuse and quite a few people have said that we should wait with the beatification. Do you think he did enough to combat abuse in the Church?

I think beatification about a person’s holiness. It’s not a reward for being a good Pope. It’s not a prize for good management. It’s an acclamation that this person was close to God and in his life and work showed us some of the attributes of God, God’s creativeness and his abundant mercy and I think that is the only context to really reflect profoundly on the moment of beatification.

Another criticism that has been levelled at Pope John Paul II is that he moved away from the renovating spirit of the Second Vatican Council. Do you think that is a fair criticism?

I was just reading in his spiritual testament, which were these very personal notes which he wrote in the last 10 years of life at the end of his annual retreats so they were reflections on his life. There were some very interesting things in one there were quite a powerful couple of sentences in which he reflected on how divine providence saved him from the assassin’s bullet and how from that moment onwards he felt as his life had been given to him afresh or rather it was lived far more closely with the Lord. He had, I think, a very reflective nature that could easily have led him to be a contemplative.

In that same testament he speaks a number of times of the great grace of the Second Vatican Council and what a privilege it was to live through and with that grace. But it is the nature of the Church to take the grace of the council, as John Paul II always spoke of the Second Vatican Council, and live it and explore it and be changed with it. The council is not, as it were, a fixed object that kind of captures neither the present nor the future of the Church but it is a moment of grace and of inspiration out of which the Church must continue to live as it faces a changing world. There is no doubt at all that the world has changed enormously in the years since the Second Vatican Council and having had a Second Vatican Council does not somehow shelter the Church from those changes or having to react or respond to those changes.

Speaking in an interview with the Catholic Herald in Rome this afternoon, Archbishop Vincent Nichols went on to compare the beatification of Pope John Paul II, which takes place tomorrow morning, with the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge which he attended yesterday.

He said: “Tomorrow, in a way, is a celebration of the same love that William and Catherine promised to each other – yesterday in marriage, today in service of priest, bishop and Pope – but it’s the same well-spring of love that comes from God that we see on both days.”

Describing yesterday’s events in Westminster Abbey, Archbishop Nichols said that the crowd cheered at two points during the wedding ceremony. He said: “It was very remarkable when it happened. The first [instance] was when the two exchanged their promises. So when Catherine said ‘I will’ there was a great cheer. People recognised the solemnity of the promises that were being made. The second was when the Archbishop of Canterbury said ‘So in the sight of God and these people I now declare you man and wife’ and there was a great cheer.

“There is popular recognition that marriage is a fresh start. That this from now on was something different and it was a profound change in the life of both those young people. And everybody recognises it. I think that gives the lie to the idea that marriage is of little consequence in our society. It clearly is of great consequence in the eyes of people witnessing and taking part in that marriage yesterday.”

Archbishop Nichols and his predecessor Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor arrived in Rome this morning to take part in tonight and tomorrow’s ceremonies after attending the royal wedding yesterday. Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham and Bishop Arthur Roche were the other two members of the British hierarchy to be in Rome for the beatification of the late pope.

Events leading up to tomorrow’s beatification kick off tonight at the Circus Maximus where the Cardinal Vicar of Rome Agostino Vallini will lead a prayer vigil for pilgrims.

New members of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham celebrated their first Easter as Catholics after the new structure expanded from 20 to almost 1,000 members after receptions and confirmations during Holy Week.

Groups of former Anglicans were received and confirmed at celebrations across the country, which began on the Monday of Holy Week. Most groups entered into full communion with the Catholic Church on Holy Thursday before or during the Mass of the Lord’s Supper though a number of groups were also received at the Easter Vigil.

Mgr Keith Newton, the Ordinary, or head, of the ordinariate, said that it was only now that the ordinariate was coming to life, although the structure was officially established in January.

He said: “This is the start of it. The lay faithful moving into the Catholic Church is really the start of the ordinariate. Until now there have been only about a dozen members, but now it is growing to between 900 and 1,000.

“It is not an enormous number of people in Catholic terms, or even for the Church of England, but it is quite significant that such a number of people are making this step together.”

The Ordinary said that the first wave of groups coming into the Catholic Church only marked the beginning of the ordinariate and that many Anglicans were watching the process carefully.

Ordinariate groups exist across England, Wales and Scotland, including in Greater London, Coventry, Cornwall, and Birmingham. The south of England was the part of Britain most strongly represented in the first wave of groups joining the ordinariate.

Fr Edwin Barnes, one of the five former Anglican bishops who have become ordinariate priests, celebrated the Easter Vigil for a group from St Barnabas in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, who had been received earlier that week. During his homily he told the group that joining the ordinariate was a kind of “resurrection moment”. The little beginnings of the different groups were “a new flowering of the Resurrection”.

“Easter is always the same, but always different,” he said. “For you the differences are very plain: no cavernous spaces of St Barnabas’s to help lift up your hearts. Until now you have been able to rely on the generosity and the prayers of those who preceded you in that place.”

The ordinariate group, Fr Barnes said, needed to “keep in touch with our former Anglican friends, to ensure by our kindness that we don’t put up barriers”. “We will be looked at by many to see just what sort of a go we can make of being ordinariate Catholics,” he said.

For James Bradley, the former curate of St John’s Sevenoaks, the Easter Triduum marked an important journey for his family. He was confirmed during the Mass of the Lord’s Supper with his former vicar, Ivan Aquilina and the Sevenoaks ordinariate group, while his sister was confirmed the day before at the Oxford Oratory. His parents were confirmed during the Easter Vigil.

Mr Bradley, who is due to be ordained as one of the ordinariate’s two transitional deacons, said: “It was wonderful to see my sister and parents received this week. Whilst they have made their own very personal journey into the full communion of the Church, it’s obviously also been something very profound for us to share.”

Archbishop Bernard Longley received three groups on Holy Thursday at St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham. Ian O’Hara, who belongs to the Coventry group, said: “Maundy Thursday was a profoundly moving yet joyful and inspiring day. This was the culmination of a journey which for many of us had lasted several years.”

Speaking about the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, Mr O’Hara said: “This Mass was especially significant and poignant for us as it marked the end of our Eucharistic Fast which we had all begun on Ash Wednesday. To make our Communion for the first time as Catholics on the very day our Lord instituted the Eucharist will have a deep and lasting affect on us all.”

For Easter the group joined the parish of St Joseph the Worker in Canley where they had received instruction.

Mr O’Hara said: “We were delighted to be able to take a full part in the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night and the Mass of Easter Day where we  celebrated our Lord’s Resurrection with even more joy and gusto this year.”

We would like to hear the stories of newly received members of the personal ordinariate. If you would like to share your story, please contact us at editorial@catholicherald.co.uk.