The Pope is Coming to Town!

I don’t follow a religion – I guess I would be called an Atheist. As such, I presume I am a member of the largest ‘religious’ grouping in the country. As far as I can see there are less than a million practising Catholics in the UK.

Their leader, the Pope, is visiting the UK this year! This is obviously a very big deal for those million or so Catholics. I understand from the news that he will be holding open air masses for 400,000 people – nearly half the Country’s practising Catholics!

Probably like most people who have heard references to this visit on the airwaves, I sort of absorbed the information, but gave it no further thought other than how bad the traffic would be around those open-air masses!

But then I heard about the cost.

£50,000,000

Who pays? Well, the Church is paying £7,000,000. They only have half that at the moment, so they will be passing the collection plate around, to try to raise the other half.

That’s OK then – it just means that £43,000,000 will be found by the British tax payer.

I thought we were short of money?

It must be because Vatican City is an important trading partner... or something.

I’m really sorry, but I just don’t get it!