Huge crowds welcome Pope to Scotland

Press, 2 June 1982, Page 9

Huge crowds welcome Pope to Scotland

NZPA-Reuter Edinburgh Pope John Paul will take a further step towards Christian unity today in Edinburgh. the predominantly Protestant capital of Scotland. where huge singing crowds gave him a rousing welcome yesterday. The Pope kissed Scottish soil, a gesture usually reserved for State visits, when he arrived in Edinburgh yesterday at the end of a tiring three-day peace and reconciliation pilgrimage in England. He begins the penultimate day of his pastoral visit to Britain today by receiving Presbyterian leaders of the Church of Scotland, which was born in the sixteenth century reformist rebellion against the Pope in Rome. His reception in Scotland yesterday was marred only by about 100 militant Protestants who threw rolled-up posters and eggs at his car as he arrived after a drive through streets lined by 50,000 people. The police said that 10 protesters were arrested. The Vatican’s dialogue with Scotland’s Presbyterians is still in its initial phase and the first brief meeting between Pope John Paul and their leader yesterday did not go beyond a polite exchange of words of goodwill and peace. The Church of Scotland has no hierarchy of priests and bishops and is further from Roman Catholicism than the Church of England in its traditions and in the development of modern in-tra-Church dialogue. The Pope sees his historic pilgrimage to Britain primarily in the context of his role as the first priest of his Church reaching out to Britain’s minority Roman Catholic -community. But the highlight of his tour of England was an historic and emotion-charged meeting with the leader of the world’s 67 million Anglicans. Archbishop Robert Runcie, in Canterbury Cathedral last Saturday. Scotland is one of Britain's economically depressed regions and the Pope will have a chance to gauge the scars

of its industrial decline when J he visits Glasgow later today. Yesterday, the Pope ended his six-city tour of England triumphantly in York, a prominent centre of the’Anglican Church. More than a quarter of a million people, the biggest turn-out of his six-day journey so far, heard the 62-year-old Polish Pope issue a strong plea in defence of the Christian family and a fresh appeal for peace between Britain and Argentina in the Falklands conflict. The Falklands conflict jeopardised the Pope's British visit right up to the last moment and the visit was only saved after the Pope ' decided to go to Argentina later this month. The conflict has been the L Pope’s constant preoccupation since he arrived last Friday, but his appeals have never amounted to open criticism of the British Government. In York yesterday, he said: "How can we not recall those many families in Britain and Argentina who bear the heavy weight of pain and sorrow because of the loss of their loved ones in the South Atlantic." Although the turn-out for • the Pope's visit in most " English cities fell well be- ‘ hind the Church's expectations. his message reached millions of families through ■ television, which has given his busy schedule blanket coverage. With the Pope having survived two assassination at- ’ tempts in the span of one year, security has been ex- ‘ ceptionally tight throughout the visit. The Pope drew about . j 200,000 people to a Mass in ■ Manchester this week, far fewer than the organisers <>• had expected. They had made plans for a congrega- xi. tion of up to a million. < The organisers were disappointed because Manchester ' is in the Catholic heartland of Britain and they had billed the Mass in advance as the biggest religious event of the Pope’s tour.