Fr Stephen Wang set up a Facebook group, “World Youth Day London 2016”, to test whether there is popular interest in the idea.

Fr Wang, dean of studies at the Allen Hall seminary in west London, said he was inspired after receiving an invitation to a group campaigning to host the 2015 World Youth Day in Kracow, from a pilgrim he had met in Madrid last year.

Fr Wang said: “It reminded me of all the fantastic buzz and energy among the English pilgrims in Madrid. There were English pilgrims all over the place, and we had lots of conversations about how fantastic it would be to have a World Youth Day in London. It was just dreams on the one hand, but there were lots of serious conversations about how it would be organised, where we would have the final Mass, and how would London cope.”

He said that the English Church could “put forward a fantastic proposal” and that, after the event had been staged in Spain, France, Italy and Germany in recent years, “the United Kingdom is the next obvious one”.

He added: “It wouldn’t just be a London event but a national event, we could even include Ireland, all the different dioceses and cities doing all these amazing things. But there is nowhere like London, in terms of the space, the infrastructure, the transport, food outlets, the venues, the parks and commons, and we have this unusual situation of three dioceses converging on one city. It is the biggest youth event in the world and London would be the ideal city.”

The 111th United States Congress (2009-2011), the author points out, ran up more debt than the first 100 congresses (1789-1989) combined. Within a decade, America will be paying more in interest payments than on its military, which itself is more than the combined militaries of pretty much everyone else.

America is certainly not alone in this. Greece might be the first into the abyss but many European countries are falling into a debt black hole, a situation that David Starkey recently described as being as big a danger to Europe as 20th-century Fascism.

But just as a credit card statement says something about an individual, the West’s debt pile reflects a deeper moral malaise, both in the state and its people. Government spending is, Steyn argues, a “moral crisis”, not a spending one. And at the heart of it is an existential crisis, one not unconnected to Europe’s abandonment of faith, of a people who only desire to live for today.

Citing the economist John Maynard Keynes’s comment that “in the long run we are all dead”, Steyn points out: “Keynes’s flippancy disguises his radicalism. For most of human history functioning societies honour the long run; it’s why millions of people have children, build houses, plant gardens, start businesses, make wills, put up beautiful churches in ordinary villages, fight and if necessary die for king and country. It’s why extraordinary men create great works of art – or did in the Europe of old.

A nation, a society, a community is a compact between past, present, and future, in which the citizens, in Tom Wolfe’s words, ‘conceive of themselves, however unconsciously, as part of a great biological stream’.”

Europeans have stopped thinking of themselves in such terms, and the stream has become a stagnant swamp. Shorn of a belief in the hereafter, or a higher truth, their cultural efforts have slumped as quickly as their birthrates. Why bother making great art or having children when in the long term we’re all dead?

In an enfeebled civilisation cut off from its own cultural heritage, the state and its apparatchiks have taken on the function of religion. In this secular world “Big Government becomes a kind of religion: the church as state”, and that religion co-opts “many of the best and brightest but politically passive”.

This statism is as intolerant as any theocracy, demanding a narrow set of values of those within its communion, even where those values are shamelessly ignoring the reality of life as it is truly lived.

Britain is, for once, way ahead of America, as Steyn, an Anglophile who has become deeply disillusioned by Britain, points out. He describes a failed, broken and violent society where people in the most expensive real estate on earth dare not wander outside their own homes (with excellent timing, the book came out just as London was rocked by three nights of looting that resembled a zombie film).

Steyn quotes Frederich Hayek’s description of the Britons of 1944, characterised by “independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, non-interference with one’s neighbour… and a healthy suspicion of power and authority”.

Today 40 per cent of Britons receive state handouts, tradition is reviled, and the standard response to any inconvenience is that the Government “do something”.

Reflecting on the welfare state, Steyn says: “Cooperation between the state and the individual has resulted in a huge expansion of the former and the ceaseless withering of the latter.”

This statism has made European society infinitely weaker, unhappier, more sterile and broke, and yet Barack Obama is busy importing this same failed ideology into America. It is, as Steyn comments, like coming down the gangplank on to Ellis Island and finding there’s this new thing called “serfdom” that is all the rage in America.

The world’s most wanted man was killed by US forces at a compound in Abbottabad, north-west Pakistan, following a tip-off dating back to last August. In a special press conference in Washington last night at 10.30 (3.30AM GMT) President Barack Obama announced that the Saudi-born fugitive, responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States which killed 3,000 people, was dead. “Justice has been done,” the US president said.

But Fr Federico Lombardi said in a statement this morning in Rome that we should not rejoice at the death of a human being.

He said: “Osama bin Laden – as we all know – was gravely responsible for promoting division and hatred between peoples, causing the end of countless innocent lives, and of exploiting religions to this end.

“Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of each and every one of us before God and before man, and hopes and commits himself so that no event be an opportunity for further growth of hatred, but for peace.”

Earlier today Prime Minister David Cameron welcomed the news, saying: “The news that Osama Bin Laden is dead will bring great relief to people across the world.”

This year the popular 48-year-old could have stood for Mayor of London or even party leader, but chose to remain in the background and take part in the philosophical battle over the soul of the party. And yet, despite being seen as the most Left-wing senior Labour figure, the Catholic second-generation Irish politician has a considerable following among conservatives.

Perhaps it is because he talks not just of family, a buzzword of both Left and Right, but of duty, obligation and fatherhood; despite Cruddas’s support for socially liberal ideas such as legal abortion, his socialism is essentially small-c conservative and aimed towards the protection of communities.

Proletarian blood still carries value in the Labour hierarchy, and in that respect Cruddas is the real thing. He has a gruff voice, so gruff in fact that my tape recorder has trouble picking it up, and an unpretentious manner that spans from earnestness to schoolboyish laughter and giggles. He speaks with great passion.

His office, at the very far end on the fringes of the MP office building Portcullis House, which he jokes must be a reflection of his importance, is littered with books on many subjects, but especially about Englishness. It’s a subject that fascinates and troubles him, and an identity he is trying to reclaim in the fallout from multiculturalism.

Cruddas’s father hailed from the north-east and was a sailor of 27 year’s standing in the Navy, meeting his future wife, a Donegal native, while stationed in Derry. All his mother’s siblings left to join the Irish Diaspora in Australia and England, while Jon and his four siblings were brought up on naval bases.

He describes it as a “strong Irish Catholic family”, soaked in the tradition of the Diaspora, and while his middle brother joined the Carmelites, “I joined the Labour party, largely because of the social teaching”.

“The heroes were the Kennedys, because they were part of that Diaspora, and Oscar Romero; it was not a Labour thing, it was a Catholic social teaching thing. A sense of obligation to the poor, and the dignity of labour, which are obviously themes running through Catholic teaching.”

The young Cruddas went to Australia, worked in the building industry and got involved in the union there. But the Cruddas children, raised by parents who had never gone near a university, had an academic inclination, with five degrees, four MAs and two PhDs between them, and Jon was no different. In fact his first rebellion as an MP was over tuition fees, and he supports the current (non-violent) student demonstrations. “I saw it and I thought they behaved with great dignity,” he says.

He came back, took a PhD in philosophy, politics and economics, and as he sums up his life story, “went to America and taught, came back, hooked up with Blair, did some research for the Labour party, did stuff about the minimum wage”.

By this stage he was married, to a fellow Labour party activist who went on to work for Harriet Harman, and the couple have a son, in his last year at the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, near the Cruddas family home in Notting Hill.

What were his first impressions of Blair? “I liked him. I liked his family. He was modern, contemporary, I liked his communitarianism, it seemed to be different to that materialism and commodification which seemed to be a hallmark of the Right and became a hallmark of New Labour.” There’s much he still admires about Blair. “He had a nice, courteous manner, I never saw him lose his temper. Trouble is it refracted into something it shouldn’t have been.”

Although proud of things such as the international criminal court, the Department for International Development and the minimum wage, he says: “It all went wrong… In the end it maintained quite a dystopian world-view, it embraced globalisation without acknowledging this rapacious thing can also be quite destructive of community and relationships.

“Blair’s early speeches were rich with a sense of nationhood and duty. If you look at his speeches in 2005 they were very different, they lost that generosity because it surrendered to a more atomised view of the world.”

This is a fairly common belief among those on the Left of the Labour Party, but what is paradoxical about Cruddas is that he sounds far more like someone from the Labour Party from before the 1960s, when the Christian socialist party was submerged by deconstructionists, Marxists and multiculturalists.

He says the “biggest calamity” facing society is “the relentless disintegration of the family and the profoundly dangerous consequential element of a lack of male role models”. And why not, he asks?

“I’m interested in a modern nationhood, I’m interested in preserving the family, and the interface between faith and politics. That might not seem the natural preserve of the Labour Party, but historically it always has been. What interests me is why it isn’t any more, because it’s rich within our history.”

I mention how I recently met a fairly important Blairite who had never heard of Cardinal Manning. Cruddas gets animated.
“A few miles down the road there was a dock strike in 1899. The Catholic Church was front and centre in the lead, built around the notion of the dignity of human labour, reciprocity and solidarity. Now we’ve lost that because we’ve lost our identity, lost what we’re about.”

He blames “certain forms of Fabianism” for taking the Labour movement away from that noble vision. “They thought that unless they raised the birth rate they might hand the country over to the Irish and the Jews.

“The Labour Party once had strong links with the Catholic Church, as the haven of migrants. Labour used to be civic and religious, now it’s secular and statist.

“We’ve always had that pluralism, and it’s a vehicle to reconcile those elements. It cannot be a preserve of a metropolitan liberal elite.”
There are also added issues in that we’re entering potential hard times with welfare about to be reformed. Cruddas describes Iain Duncan Smith, in charge of welfare reform, as “a good man” and says he respects where he’s coming from, “but you have to see the colour of the money”.

“On the one hand you can say welfare is a sin. On the other, people with profound mental health issues and life-threatening diseases are being pushed off incapacity benefit on to Jobseeker’s Allowance. That’s the collatoral damage. I think people have an obligation to work. But I don’t want ‘the Big Society’ to be used to hide these profound social changes, taking £18 billion of welfare cuts.”

Funnily enough, Cruddas is one of very few politicians on either side of the house who likes David Cameron’s big, and so far largely unsold, idea. “Fraternity, duty, obligation, I like those things, and it’s clever for the Tories to do that. The question is what it obscures. Is it just cover for the dismantling of services?”

The Big Society is based around a Victorian concept of civic mindedness, of the “little platoons” rebuilding the social fabric undone in four decades, and of volunteering. What most politicians will not admit is that such a theme is dependent on religious groups, many of whom might hold views at odds with the social liberal norm.

“Absolutely,” he says, “the most interesting movements in London are faith-based.” Among those he supports are London Citizens, which campaigns against what used to be called “usury”. For reasons I cannot understand, few politicians seem to be interested in this obvious social evil, arguably as destructive as gambling or drug abuse, few politicians except Cruddas.

“The way they target these products at the working poor, the people who are really struggling, is wrong. These compound interest rates are wrong. It’s very dangerous, a form of modern gangsterism. Why can’t you re-moralise the economy?”

London Citizens is led by an academic Cruddas describes as “the most interesting man around Labour”, Maurice Glassman: “He has a whole model of Labour going wrong and why it got wrong, because it lost its anchorage in faith-based traditions, and lost its sense of duty and reciprocity.”

He also praises the Christian Socialist Movement for re-Christianising the party.

But what about his voting record on abortion, which is decidely un-Catholic? He says he did not support previous amendments because “they were tagged on for political purposes” and he argues that it “should be safe, legal and rare”, which will not please many Catholics.

“I don’t like abortion, I don’t know anyone who does. The fear is if you dramatically change it you lead it to the back door.”

New Labour and the Church fell out spectacularly not just over abortion, but also Iraq, the adoption agencies and plans to dilute church schools. That latter plan, by Cruddas’s colleague Alan Johnson, was slapped down by Archbishop Vincent Nichols. Despite various differences Cruddas welcomes the new leader of the English Church. “I met him and like him. I think he’s going to be a tough political operator, which I welcome. I want him on the park in these debates.”

Cruddas’s vision of moral capitalism is the interface between his brand of socialism and Chestertonian conservatism, and “Red Tory” philosopher Phillip Blond has had kind words to say about him.

“Oh really, oh no,” he shrugs and laughs, then gets serious again. “I like Phillip Blond. I like the idea of mutuals and the mixed economy. You have to re-capitalise the poor and create a just society. Labour has to be there. We’ve lost our language, we talk a lot about justice and fairness but we don’t talk about duty and family.”

He blames “relativism driven by individualism” and, unlike many in the party, Cruddas accepts the concept of the broken society, and his own constituency of Dagenham and Rainham has certainly suffered its fair share of social problems from the broken society.
With a constituency in the cheapest borough in Greater London, Cruddas recently warned about “social cleansing”, poor people being driven out of inner London by changes to welfare. This will “turn up the dial” on already rapid changes in outer London, aggravating serious social problems.

Dagenham, once famous for cars, is now probably best known for the British National Party. Until May the party held 12 seats on the local council and both Cruddas’s seat and next door Barking were major targets.

“You cannot ignore the fact that there are racial elements to this,” he says. “People get worried when they can’t get a house or a school and it becomes racialised, it’s very dangerous stuff. This [race] is what everyone is talking about. When your community changes around you, it’s very uncomfortable. I think Labour should conserve things – families, relationships, communities.”

But isn’t it also true that while poverty aggravates social unease, and unpalatable though it may be to suggest, people there just don’t want their communities to ethnically change. Realistically, won’t Dagenham end up with the same demographics as Newham and Tower Hamlets, I suggest.

“I agree,” he says with what I think is surprising honesty. “Our community will take the strain.”

Well, at least they won’t have to worry about the BNP in Dagenham for long, then.

Whatever the Coalition’s housing policy, this demographic revolution was the product of Labour’s immigration policies. I wonder how much one can square conservative socialism with the Left’s ideological commitment to diversity.

Perhaps he could have done more if he stood as Labour London mayoral candidate in 2012, something most pollsters predicted him to win. “Because, because.” He pauses: “I thought about it. But I don’t want anything, that’s my point. I never expected to be an MP. What I’m interested in is whether Labour rediscovers its soul. I’m going to put in my two-pennyworth in that debate. I’m not trading up anything.”

There is a “crisis” of social democracy in Europe, he says, so “does Labour just become a residual metropolitan and public sector or does it speak a language that transcends the identity politics?

“The real danger is that politics becomes Balkanised, religion and race.”

Labour should return, instead, to the fundamental virtues, among them the search for compassion. He quotes Karen Armstrong’s description of Hillel’s law, when a non-believer comes up to the Hebrew prophet and says he’ll convert if Hillel will stand on one leg and recite the scriptures.

“He just stands on one leg and says ‘Do unto others as they would to you.’ That’s the Torah, the rest is just commentary.” I suppose a Christian socialist might say the same for the Labour manifesto; but as the party enters the wilderness it will be interesting to see how it looks when it returns.

Pope Benedict announced the Visitation in March this year in a pastoral letter to Catholics in Ireland, in which he expressed sorrow and regret at the abuse perpetrated by priests in that country.

He said it would be “pastoral in nature” and that it was “intended to assist the local Church on her path of renewal and… a sign of the Holy Father’s desire, as the Successor of Peter, to offer his pastoral solicitude to the Church in Ireland”.

The Visitation will identify whether reforms of the local Church, seminaries and religious communities have been put in place, especially the effectiveness of current processes in responding to abuse.

It will not be an investigation into individual cases of abuse nor a trial to judge past events, but the Visitators will have to identify the explicit problems that may require some assistance from the Holy See.

The four Visitators are Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor for Armagh; Cardinal Seán O’Malley for Dublin, Archbishop Thomas Collins for Cashel and Emly and Archbishop Terrence Prendergast SJ for Tuam.

The Visitators may bring with them some people, approved by the Congregation for Bishops, who can serve as assistants.

The four men will make themselves available to those who have been affected by abuse, both the victims and their families.

They will monitor how well the guidelines of Safeguarding Children, Standards and Guidance Document for the Catholic Church in Ireland, commissioned and produced in February 2009 by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, are functioning and how they may be better implemented and improved.

“Given the delicate nature of the subject matter”, the Visitators will not grant interviews until the end of the first phase of the process next Easter, according to the Vatican.

Addressing the Pope at Oscott College in Birmingham on the last day of the Holy Father’s British visit, the leader of Scotland’s Catholics thanked Benedict for “four wonderful days”.

He said: “It was a particular joy that you would arrive on the day of St Ninian. Your words, and very presence, brought back to us our ancient Christian heritage.

“The St Ninian scarf, which you so graciously wore, showed you were proud to be an honorary Scotsman just for a day.

“Already in Scotland we are talking about the ‘Benedict bounce’. Be assured, Holy Father, that we are bouncing back. You are reassuring us that Christianity is alive and well in our countries.”

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, president of the bishops’ conference of England and Wales, also thanked the Pope before he left for Birmingham airport.

He said: “You are contributing richly to our history and the shaping of our future. Your visit to us was official. But our farewell to you is entirely personal.”

In an address to the Bishops of England, Scotland and Wales, Pope Benedict spoke about the warm welcome he had received in Great Britain: “In the course of my visit it has become clear to me how deep a thirst there is among the British people for the Good News of Jesus Christ.

“You have been chosen by God to offer them the living water the Gospel, encouraging them to place their hopes, not in the vain enticements of this world, but in the firm assurances of the next.”

The Pope’s four-day trip is largely seen as being a spectacular success, in spite of fears that it would be marred by protests or ignored. There were complaints by many groups at the £10m cost to taxpayers, many of whom considered it inappropriate to grant a state visit to a religious leader. Protests also focused around the child abuse scandal.

Pope Benedict, having met five abuse victims yesterday in London, raised the subject once again in his address to his bishops.

He said: “You have publicly acknowledged your deep regret over what has happened and the often inadequate way it was addressed in the past. The growing awareness of the extent of child abuse in society, its devastating effects, and the need to provide proper victim support should serve as incentive to share the lessons you have learned with the wider community.

“Indeed, what better way could there be of making reparation for these sins than by reaching out, in a humble spirit of compassion, towards children who continue to suffer abuse elsewhere? Our duty of care towards the young demands nothing less.”

“As we reflect on the human fragility that these tragic events so starkly reveal, we are reminded that, if we are to be effective Christian leaders, we must live lives of the utmost integrity, humility and holiness. As Blessed John Henry Newman once wrote: “ ‘O that God would grant the clergy to feel their weakness as sinful men and the people to sympathise with them and love them and pray for their increase in all good gifts of grace’ “.

Pope Benedict thanked the bishops for taking “painstaking care” about the new English translation of the Mass, and urged them to “seize the opportunity” to offer in-depth catechesis when the new text is introduced into parishes.

He also asked them to be generous in implementing Anglicanorum coetibus, which he said could “contribute positively” to relations between Anglicans and Catholics.

The Pope closed his speech by thanking the bishops warmly for their hospitality and “commending all you and the people you serve to the intercession of St Andrew, St David and St George, I am pleased to impart my Apostolic Blessing to you and to all the clergy, religious and lay faithful of England, Scotland and Wales”.

Afterwards Archbishop Nichols presented the Holy Father with a special edition of a text by fellow Bavarian, the 17th-century Venerable Bartholomew Holzhauser, before each bishop in turn said a few words to him.

The Pontiff met David Cameron, along with acting Labour leader Harriet Harman and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, before celebrating Mass at Westminster Cathedral. He spent 20 minutes with Mr Cameron and 10 with Mr Clegg.

It is the first time a Pope has met the head of a British government during a state visit, and concludes an emotional month for the prime minister.

Mr Cameron missed last night’s prayer vigil in Westminster Hall as he was attending his father’s funeral in Berkshire.

Ian Cameron died last week while on holiday in France, and never lived to see the birth of his granddaughter Florence, born last month in Cornwall.

Before the papal visit Downing Street released a video message in which Prime Minister David Cameron said the Pope would be offered a “very warm welcome” on his UK visit.

In the first public event of the UK papal visit since he arrived in England last night, the Holy Father told an excited gathering of children at St Mary’s University College in Twickenham, west London, that “they must not just be good students but good citizens and good people”.

After a positive start to the four-day papal visit yesterday, with large crowds in Edinburgh and Glasgow greeting the pontiff warmly, Benedict arrived in London last night and stayed at the Apostolic Nunciature residence in Wimbledon, south-west London before celebrating a private mass.

His second day of official functions – later he will meet the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace and address dignitaries at Westminster Hall – began with a celebration of Catholic education at the west London college.

There the Pope met Education Secretary Michael Gove and local MP Vince Cable, as well as Bishop Malcolm McMahon of Nottingham, chairman of the Catholic Education Service of England and Wales (CESEW), as well as its chief executive Oona Stannard.

Bishop McMahon welcomed the Holy Father for the “great joy” the visit had brought to their hearts.

“Today, we celebrate the many generations of young people who were educated in Catholic schools and colleges and have subsequently taken their place in society to serve the common good.

“We celebrate the wonderful sense of faith and community that characterises our schools. And we celebrate with you, our faith, our love, and our hope for the future.”

In turn the Pope said: “The presence of religion in Catholic schools is a powerful reminder of the much-discussed Catholic ethos that needs to inform every respect of school life. It means that the life of faith needs to be the driving force for every activity in the school.”

And in a comment that will be interpreted as a reference to the abuse crisis, Benedict talked about the importance of providing a “safe environment for children”.

He said: “The life of faith can only be effectively nurtured when the prevailing atmosphere is one of respect and affectionate trust.”

The Pope then opened the college’s John Paul II Institute for Sport, named after Benedict’s football-loving predecessor who hoped that sport and faith could go hand in hand.

The Pope was greeted by Welsh pupils, who gave him a book on the history of British martyrs, while Scottish pupils gave him a book of poetry from Iona.

Blue Peter presenter Andy Akinwolere introduced the second hymn, led by the award-winning Maria Fidelis gospel choir from north London. There was also a live link-up with St John Vianney Basic Cycle School in Gambia and Pupils of Holy Cross Primary School, Plymouth

Opening his address to the children after a prayer by John Henry Newman, the Holy Father said he hoped there were saints in the audience today.

“By far the best thing for you is to grow in holiness,” he told the children. “Money is not enough to make you happy. True happiness is to be found in God. Only He can satisfy the deepest needs of our hearts.”

At a press conference yesterday, Lord Patten, who is in charge of the Government’s part of the visit, said: “It’s worth remembering that this is not only a great British event but a great European Commonwealth event – 40 per cent of Canadians are Catholic, 25 per cent of Australians – and a great global event. When the Pope went to Sydney for World Youth Day I think more people went to Sydney for that than went to Sydney for the Olympics. We would expect a huge amount of global attention for his visit here.”

Lord Patten, a former Cabinet minister and the last Governor of Hong Kong, also set out to explain why the British Government had invited the Pope.

He said: “First of all, we are welcoming the head of a Church which represents about 10 per cent of citizens of this country, and represents over a billion people around the world. Second, we’re welcoming somebody with whose Church we work closely around the world in pursuit of the Government’s aims of promoting social equity and sustainable development.

“We don’t share every policy position but we work extremely closely with the Church in Africa, in Asia, in the United Nations, for example, in about three weeks time in promoting the same goals in New York when the Millennium Development Goals are discussed, and I hope when the issue of climate change is debated once again later this year.”

He also praised the “important contribution” the Church made to the social development of Britain.

“For all those reasons the Pope’s visit is hugely welcome. But it’s also welcome I think because of its assertion of the important role that religion, that Christianity, has played in the shaping of our own society. I think people will be listening to what His Holiness has to say about the relationship between religion and some of the other presently dominant influences in our society and in Europe as a whole,” he said.

At the press conference, organised for foreign media, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster praised the Government for its “extraordinary” work in planning the events.

He said the visit had profound “historic and cultural implications”, and the image of Queen Elizabeth meeting Pope Benedict “would resonate through the story of this land”.

The Archbishop said: “When the Pope enters Westminster Hall on the Friday evening to address politicians, diplomats, leaders of this society, that will be another very historic and resonant moment. The Pope will pause at the spot at which St Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor of England, was condemned to death in 1535 for his Catholic faith. He will be on that spot.

“He will also, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, go to pray at the tomb of St Edward the confessor, the canonised King of England, the founder of Westminster Abbey.”

Journalist Austen Ivereigh, who runs Catholic Voices, a team of young Catholics trained to speak to the media, and Fr Christopher Jamison, former abbot of Worth Abbey, spoke against the motion “The papal visit should not be a state visit”, but were defeated by a hostile crowd. Human rights activist Peter Tatchell and philosopher A C Grayling spoke for the motion at the event in the South Place Ethical Society building in central London.

The debate, organised by Central London Humanists together with the British Humanist Association, was chaired by Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee.

Alan Palmer, chairman of the Central London Humanists, said before the event: “We know that many people are angry that the state visit of Pope Benedict XVI is going to cost the UK taxpayer a lot of money. Some wonder whether in the current economic circumstances we should be spending millions of pounds to provide a state platform for a religious leader who has already criticised our legislation and condemned the way we organise our society.”

But Dr Ivereigh described the debate as “a bear pit”, saying afterwards: “It was very nasty, there was a lot of shouting, a lot of abuse. It was very hard to make our point. But I was glad we were there. Even if people weren’t listening, and they weren’t, it was important that we were there, and we witnessed what the Catholic Church is about.”

Speaking against the papal visit, A C Grayling said the Pope and the Church were being given a platform that was disproportionate to the size of their membership and being paid for by the UK taxpayer. He also said the Catholic Church was a criminal conspiracy, with members committing crimes and those crimes being protected by the hierarchy higher up.

Peter Tatchell said the Pope should not be invited because he opposes women’s ordination, as well as IVF and embryonic stem cell research, and as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger helped to cover up child sex abuse cases. He also criticised plans to make Pius XII a saint.

Speaking against the motion, Fr Jamison said the Church made huge contributions to civil society through schools, and helped with homelessness and the environment.

Dr Ivereigh, a former spokesman for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said the Pope was right about Aids in Africa, and that the Catholic Church saved more Jews during the Holocaust than any other organisation.

One Catholic, who writes the Claz Coms blog, said many members of the audience wore “anti-Catholic ‘Pope Nope’ T-shirts” and that “right from the start of the debate, there was a lot of shouting from the humanist supporters… I don’t mean civilised shouts of agreement or disagreement, but actually almost barbaric screams of war!”

She wrote on her blog: “As a Catholic, I want to say how pleased I am with the way Catholics behaved, and voiced their opinions. Of the two sides, the reasons for the Pope’s state visit were by far the most succinctly argued, calmly delivered, and least abusive.”

Another member of the audience, Sister Gemma Simmonds of the Congregation of Jesus, said: “As a woman and a British citizen I frequently object to a variety of heads of state”, but that people around the world had to aspire to get on as best as they could. She urged people to welcome him.