When the Pope Went to Westminster, by Stephen P. White

By Stephen P. White, The Catholic Thing, September 4, 2025

Stephen P. White is executive director of The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America and a fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Fifteen years ago this month, Pope Benedict XVI became the first pope to make a state visit to Britain. (John Paul II made a pastoral visit in 1982.) It was an historic event, both for the Catholic Church in the UK and for the United Kingdom. Nearly five centuries after Henry VIII broke with the Church, here was the Bishop of Rome being received by the Queen at Holyroodhouse, welcomed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in Lambeth, and invited to address British leaders and dignitaries in Westminster Hall – the very place where St. Thomas More had been tried and condemned 475 years before.

The central event of the pope’s visit was the beatification of John Henry Newman in Birmingham. Naturally, Newman loomed large in the pope’s various speeches and homilies during his entire visit. It’s worth revisiting some of Benedict’s speeches and homilies, not only because the recent decision of Pope Leo XIV to declare Newman a doctor of the Church makes them timely, but because Benedict’s remarks, which draw heavily on Newman, have only grown in relevance in the subsequent decade and a half. …

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