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Thursday 9 February 2012

Between Cameron and the Pope

With preparations for the Pope’s visit to Britain in disarray, the government called in Lord Patten to smooth things out. He tells Damian Thompson why he is up to the task

Fr Radcliffe is a posh, progressive theologian, idolised by socially ambitious bien pensant Catholics. Conservative types may be irritated by the implication that the Pope must be innocent because Radcliffe says so — but hardly surprised. Radcliffe is the favourite priest of The Tablet, a liberal Catholic magazine unsympathetic to Benedict XVI, whose trustees include Dame Helen Ghosh, the head of Whitehall’s Papal Visit Team, Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, and Lord Patten of Barnes. Some Church sources suggest that, in order to distance themselves from Pope Benedict’s conservatism, the English bishops have forged an alliance with lay representatives of ‘Catholicism-lite’, whose most powerful spokesman is Chris Patten.

He certainly doesn’t pretend to be as orthodox as Joseph Ratzinger. ‘I’m like a lot of other Catholics,’ he says. ‘I don’t agree with everything that the Vatican says. But I admire this Pope intellectually and suspect he’s rather more open to dialogue with the 21st century than one or two of those who advise him.’

We quickly touch on a couple of contentious issues: the use of condoms to stop the spread of Aids, which Patten supports, and homosexuality. ‘The Catholic Church and other Churches are full of people who are devout and gay, and I assume that one reason that God loves them is that they have been subject to so much discrimination and persecution,’ he says. That’s a message that will play well on Channel 4 News, and it suggests that Lord Patten’s role extends beyond organisation: he’s a human shield, as it were, between the Church and a growing number of British taxpayers who regard Catholic moral teaching as hypocrisy — and aren’t in a mood to subsidise the Pope in an era of austerity.

‘Look, of all the organisational challenges I’ve faced in my career, I wouldn’t describe this as the greatest,’ he says. Perhaps not. Then again, he doesn’t know what the enemies of the Church in the media and on the streets are planning. Protecting Catholic bureaucrats from the consequences of their own incompetence is one thing, and Lord Patten has already done it. But can he protect the Pope?

Damian Thompson is a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph and a director of the Catholic Herald.

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