London, Sept. 16: There was an important 
question that Bhai Sahib Mohinder Singh forgot to ask Pope Benedict XVI when he met the 83-year-old Pontiff today at the start of his four-day state visit to the UK: “What about Mother Teresa?”
The chairman of the British Sikh Consultative Forum had a brief chat with the Queen and Pope at a reception after the two heads of state had made their formal speeches at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.
The Sikh leader reported: “I thought their speeches were great — a real message of peace, reconciliation and strong values.”
The Pope’s visit to Britain, which the Vatican considers possibly the most crucial of his 17 overseas trips to date, will be followed closely by 1.1billion Catholics across the world, including more than 17m in India.
But the Catholic Church in India, highly regarded for the exceptional quality of its educational institutions and its charity work, has avoided the crime of persistent abuse of children by priests in many other countries.
The gay and lesbian lobby, too, is likely to mount protests during the Pope’s UK tour which will include Masses and meetings in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Birmingham.
Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain is the first since that by his predecessor, John Paul
11, in 1982. The Queen, who is head of state but also holds the title, “Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England”, led a cordial welcome for the Pope at a ceremony with considerable pomp and colour.
She said: “Much has changed in the world nearly 30 years since Pope John Paul’s visit. In this country we deeply appreciate the involvement of the Holy See in the dramatic improvement in the situation in Northern Ireland. Elsewhere the fall of totalitarian regimes across Central and Eastern Europe has allowed greater freedom for hundreds of millions of people.”
According to official figures, there are 4.2 million Catholics in England and Wales, under one fifth the 25 million baptised Anglicans. Muslims make up 1.6 million and Hindus probably under one million. But while mosques are exceptionally busy and, to a lesser extent, temples and gurdwaras, too, the numbers going to Catholic Mass is put at 861,000. Church of England worshippers is estimated at 852,000.
There are forecasts that among active worshippers, the largest number will come from Muslims who have over 1,000 mosques in the UK, with applications pending for the construction of many more.
Though there are deep differences between the churches of England and Rome, they can unite when it comes to combating militant Islam and the jihadi movement.
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| Speech to welcome Pope Benedict XVI |
The Queen spelt this out: “Your Holiness, in recent times you have said that religions can never become vehicles of hatred, that never by invoking the name of God can evil and violence be justified. Today, in this country, we stand united in that conviction. We hold that freedom to worship is at the core of our tolerant and democratic society.”
The Pope and his advisers take the view that Britain has bent over too far in accommodating non-Christian faiths, especially Islam. A member of the Papal team, Cardinal Walter Kasper — a German like the Pope — has pulled out after giving an interview in which he said that a streak of “aggressive new atheism” was rife in British society.
The cardinal appeared to attack multi-cultural Britain when he observed: “When you arrive at Heathrow you think at times that you’ve landed in a Third World country.”
Responding to the Queen, the Pope said pointedly: “Today, the United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society. In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate.”
He reminded the world that “the Christian message has been an integral part of the language, thought and culture of the peoples of these islands for more than a thousand years.”
The Pope, who was forced to join the Hitler Youth when very young, recalled: “Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives.
And he confirmed: “John Henry Newman, whose beatification I will celebrate shortly, was one of many British Christians of his age whose goodness, eloquence and action were a credit to their countrymen and women.”
It is not that the present Pope has anything against Mother Teresa – it’s just that lifting her from beatification to full-fledged canonization is not one of his priorities, as was the case with Polish-born John Paul II.
Had the latter been alive, Mother Teresa would have been officially declared a saint by now, though her many admirers in Calcutta and throughout the world are not especially bothered: “To us, she has always been a saint.”
It will be recalled that after Mother Teresa passed away in 1997, John Paul II waived the five-year rule and fast-tracked her beatification which took place in October 2003 in Rome – one of his last significant acts as head of the Roman Catholic Church.
But when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger succeeded him as Pope in 2005, Mother Teresa’s formal canonization was put on the back burner. It will happen in due course, insiders say, but add that the process may take another century or so.