Jim Murphy

Minister for Europe

FCO Logo
« Human Rights and the... | Main | Sport - the biggest... »
Thursday 22 May, 2008

My meeting with the Pope

Jim Murphy meets Pope Benedict XVI

Yesterday I was in Rome to meet the Ministers in the new Italian government.  I also took part in a general audience with the Pope at the Vatican. Wet weather meant that thousands of pilgrims were invited into the Vatican to listen to the Pontiff.

The atmosphere was incredible and unexpected. I had expected a calm and reverential event and was amazed by how wrong I was. It was a wonderfully spiritual occasion but it was more than that. It was a celebration of Faith. It was loud and boisterous. As Pope Benedict named each group of pilgrims they cheered, sang or applauded. The noisiest group were the Polish groups. Some had brought instruments, many waved flags.

I had the once in a lifetime opportunity to meet the Pope at the end of the Audience and spoke to him about international debt and world poverty. It was a wonderful opportunity which I will never forget.

Posted at 16:51 22 May 2008 by Jim Murphy  |  Comments[3]

  • Share this with:
Comments:

The Pope is not only a great religious figure but a man who has enormous influence over the religious sense of the world's one billion plus Catholics including Jim I believe. I don't know whether you met The Pope in a personal capacity or in your role as Minister for Europe or perhaps both but I do think that it's important for us to take note that it's not just governments and diplomatic organisations that guide the path of this world but also people and their beliefs. As Tony Blair recently said, religion is an important factor in securing peace in this world. The Pope is already a man of peace and whether you are a Catholic or not he is a shining example of someone who has devoted their life to promoting peace and solidarity across the world.

Posted by Justin on June 04, 2008 at 04:35 PM BST #

Bollocks if you ask me. You know he was in the NSDAP in his youth. Of course he claims he was forced into it. Yeah right. I think that politicians, regardless of their religious beliefs, should work for the strict division of church and state. In the country I live in, over 60 of the population do not believe in any god or gods, and that figure has gone up each time they take a poll. That means the majority, any way you look at it. And we don't want to hear any religious guff from politicians.

Posted by Sha O'Gyeza on June 08, 2008 at 04:38 PM BST #

France successfully divided church and state in 1905. Why, over 100 years later, are British political figures still getting involved with the church? And why are people like Blair and Bush talking about joining the Catholic Church? The Catholic Church's retrogressive policies - such as on contraception and abortion - do nothing to help the developing world.

Posted by Mark on June 16, 2008 at 11:24 AM BST #

Post a Comment:
  • HTML Syntax: NOT allowed

Calendar

« December 2009
MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
   
       
Today

Search

Feeds

Tag cloud

Blogroll

Evaluations

FCO bloggers

FCO partners overseas

FCO websites

UK government websites