UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald
Lord Patten of Barnes’ lecture for the English and Welsh bishops’ World Communications Day
The Invitation
Shortly after the 2010 election, I was asked by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, if I would help to organise the visit of Emeritus Pope Benedict to the United Kingdom. This naturally brought me into regular contact with Vatican officials. I had visited the Vatican before as a Minister and European Commissioner and met both Pope St John Paul and some of his officials. But the events of 2010 ensured more regular contact and some complicated discussions. I have to say, for example, that acting as a go-between with the First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, and the Vatican was far from straightforward not least at the Edinburgh side of the partnership! But in the event, the visit of His Holiness went very well, above all for two reasons. First, the Pope himself – who impressed all who met him as a holy, scholarly, gentle intellectual with a remarkable facility for expressing complex issues in simple and beautiful language. Second, there were the congregations who came to the masses and vigils during the visit, representing as they did the depth and breadth of Catholicism in England and Scotland – every age, every social class and every ethnicity.
It was perhaps my encounters with Rome then, and my subsequent three year experience as the principal regulator of the BBC, that led to an unexpected phone call in July last year. I was telephoned out of the blue by Cardinal George Pell whom I had only seen once before preaching in his cathedral in Sydney at a Christmas morning mass a few years ago. I of course know as well that he was an Oxford alumnus, with a doctorate from the university and a formidable knowledge of English history especially of the 16th century. Cardinal Pell invited me to take the chair of a committee charged with reviewing the Holy See’s media operations and proposing new structures. This was related to the overall work he was doing to reform the Vatican’s financial and administrative structures which had become subjects of growing public and private concern.
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