Announcement of the Holy Father's State Visit

Photo Credit: Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk

As more or less every Catholic blog in the world has now posted, today the official announcement was made of the Holy Father's forthcoming visit to Britain. There is a fine new website for the occasion: Pope Benedict in the United Kingdom.


I have just registered at the website but I am not sure whether it would be considered cheeky or not to ask for press accreditation as a blogger :-)

The website carries the Press release issued jointly by HMG and the Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Scotland, England and Wales. Rt Hon Jim Murphy MP, Secretary of State for Scotland, is the Government Minister who will lead the preparations for the visit.

Her Majesty the Queen has confirmed the state visit and here is the statement from Buckingham Palace. I just had to take a screen grab of this historic page from the official website of the British Monarchy:


Here is the video announcement from Archbishop Nichols:



It was also confirmed today that the Holy Father will beatify Cardinal Newman during his visit. See the announcement at the Newman Cause blog.

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