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Diocese marks 40 years since Pope John Paul II’s visit to Manchester

People from our diocese are coming together this week to celebrate the anniversary of a major moment in Manchester faith history.

On 31 st May 1982, around a quarter of a million people flocked into Manchester’s Heaton Park to catch a glimpse of Pope John Paul II.

The pope – who was later canonised as Saint John Paul II in 2014 – visited the park as part of the first ever papal visit to the UK.

Banners waved and hymns filled the air as hundreds of thousands of the faithful came together to celebrate Mass with the head of the global Catholic Church.

This historic day is one that continues to live in the memories of people across Greater Manchester, many of whom have shared their thoughts and feelings of that momentous day.

Catherine Astin was a member of the diocesan choir and arrived in the very early hours of the morning to avoid the crowds.

She said: “It was a momentous occasion being the first time a reigning Pope had visited England, seeing the Pope-mobile wander round the park was very exciting and being in the choir we thought we would be close to all the action and get a good view of the Pope, but unfortunately, we were quite a way away.

“Seeing all the crowds of people who came to worship God in the park was quite awe inspiring and the Pope was a very charismatic leader.

“It was also my birthday so it will always be an extra special day in my life.”

The day was also beautifully captured by the Parish of St Margaret Clitherow in Rochdale when one parishioner reminisced about the day in a parish magazine.

“That moment and that day will stay with me as long as I live.”

The parishioner – Connie Hunt – wrote about spending the night under the stars to be ready for the Pope’s arrival.

She said: “There was a real sense of excitement. We were, after all, about to see history in the making – the first ever pope to visit these shores. I well remember feeling elated and proud to be Catholic.

“It was a clear summer’s night, so we literally slept under the stars. I don’t remember sleeping much though as we spent the night chatting, praying, singing hymns, and watching the new arrivals.

“I particularly relished being among so many young people and I can remember feeling so proud of our own youth from the Sacred Heart church.”

Connie goes on to to describe the buzz of the crowds the next day as the Pope’s helicopter appeared overhead and the famous Pope-mobile made its way into the park from nearby Nazareth House:

“He was here at last! He was waving and we were all waving back. The park was a sea of yellow and white papal flags. Also to be seen were a great number of red and white Polish flags.”

The day was additionally special as 12 men were ordained as priests during the Mass celebrated by the Holy Father.

Connie said: “It was a very moving moment when 12 young men came forward and lay prostrate before His Holiness as they made their final preparations for ordination to the priesthood.

“In his homily, Pope John Paul told them: “Realise how closely the bond of priesthood unites you to Christ. You must be men of God, His close friends.””

To mark the 40 th anniversary of this wonderful day, the Prestwich parish of Our Lady of Grace – the parish in which Heaton Park is located – will hold a celebratory Mass at Our Lady of Grace church, at 7pm on Tuesday 31st May.

The Diocese of Salford are also discussing ideas to recycle the bullet-proof glass from the event – which took place the year after the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II – into a lasting reminder of the occasion.

Connie finished: “That moment and that day will stay with me as long as I live. It was a great privilege to have been there.

“From time to time, I go back to Heaton Park and standing by the specially erected papal monument, the whole experience comes back to me.

“We were certainly truly blessed on that day in 1982.”

Tagged | Around the Diocese | Bishop John | Catholic Church | Diocese | Events | Mass | Parishes | Pope | Vatican

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The Enduring Legacy of John Paul II’s 1982 Visit to Britain

“For the first time in history,” said Pope St. John Paul II after he stepped off the airplane, “a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil.”

Joanna Bogle, February 16, 2022 – National Catholic Register

In 2022, the Church in Britain marks an important milestone in its long history: This May, it will be 40 years since the first visit of a pope to Britain.

And it almost didn’t happen.

There had been months of preparation, much debate and discussion in the media, elaborate rehearsals by choirs and cathedrals and Catholic organizations, the hiring of massive venues, including London’s famous Wembley Stadium — and then the Falklands war broke out, and the whole idea of a papal visit was called into question.

Most people in Britain knew little or nothing about the Falkland Islands, a small British colony in the South Atlantic. In April 1982, Argentinian forces invaded the Falklands, swept the small British garrison aside, and announced that the islands were now in Argentinian control.  Britain responded by sending a Royal Navy task force, and effectively the British were at war.

As part of the anniversary, I have been dipping into archives and discovering the inside story of the emergency meetings and messages that went back and forth between Britain and Rome as the crisis deepened and the papal visit was at risk of being abandoned. There must have been a great deal of prayer. Pope John Paul II, of course, led the prayers for peace, and British and Argentinian bishops were summoned to Rome, where he celebrated a Mass with them all. And then came the climax of the last-minute rescue operation to save the situation: He flew to Argentina for a swiftly arranged papal visit, before going on to Britain.

It was clear throughout that the Pope was not only neutral but that he was vigorously promoting peace: This was his consistent message, and it never wavered. On this basis, he was able to fly to London’s Gatwick Airport, where, as planned in detail over the previous months, a large crowd, drawn from Catholic parishes across Surrey and Sussex, had gathered to greet him. I was among that crowd. I remember the early-morning start and the excitement as we all arrived in a chartered bus, and then the wait at the airport, where the Duke of Norfolk — by long-established tradition Britain’s senior Catholic layman — greeted the Pope at the airport steps.

This was not, it was emphasized, an official visit. This was a pastoral visit of the Pope to Britain’s Catholics. So no formal representative of the queen was at the airport, and there were no government officials. There was music, and we sang a welcoming hymn. Then there were speeches — and the history was made. The Pope summed it up when he proclaimed, “For the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil.”

In its own way, the tragedy of the Falklands War — more than 800 men, British and Argentinian, would eventually lose their lives in the fighting — helped to create a situation where old antagonisms dating back to the Reformation in Britain seemed to dwindle away. The papal visit became a true opportunity for a message of peace and goodwill, with anti-Catholicism of the old sort somehow at variance with a general recognition of the needs of the modern era. The whole visit had, in any case, been planned with ecumenical goodwill in mind, and there were some powerful moments, notably at Canterbury Cathedral, where the Pope prayed with Anglicans at the site of the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket.

And, yes, he did meet the queen — a courtesy visit, with tea at Buckingham Palace — with evident goodwill on both sides. Queen Elizabeth was wearing, I remember, a blue dress, and they were smiling and chatting as they emerged from the palace after tea. Postcards of the scene quickly became popular — I’ve still got mine.

The papal pilgrimage had the seven sacraments as its theme. At a packed Mass at Westminster Cathedral, the Pope baptized seven candidates of various ages, and then, after crossing the Thames at Lambeth Bridge, he arrived at St. George’s Cathedral, Southwark, which had been cleared of pews and filled with stretchers and wheelchairs bearing sick and disabled people from across Britain, and he administered the sacrament of the sick. And so it went on, across England and Wales and Scotland, with a penitential service, first Holy Communions, confirmations, ordinations and renewal of marriage vows. Vast crowds came, powerful moments of prayer experienced.

It was an unforgettable time. Looking back through the archives, something of the joy and excitement is still evident. So, too, are the changes since those days — the letters are typewritten (remember typewriters?) and there is just one reference to “a computer being installed” as a great innovation at one venue to store relevant information. Color photography relied entirely on film, paper and chemicals (some of the pictures have that curious greenish tinge that I remember well).  Fashions have, of course, changed: Ladies wore dresses, and there were even quite a lot of hats.

What did the papal visit achieve? A great deal. With its massive television coverage, it opened up an authentic vision of Catholic worship: from how Catholics pray to the centrality of the Eucharist. People saw what a baptism is and what is meant by the anointing of the sick. They saw the Pope as a bishop, a man in a white robe preaching about peace and the importance of family life and family prayer. Old notions of the Pope as a sinister foreign figure intent on imposing some sort of political rule were recognized as propaganda from a vanished era.

And that 1982 visit was followed, in the next century, by an official state visit by Pope Benedict XVI, where among much else, he addressed Parliament with a magnificent setting out of the respective roles of Church and state centered on a ringing call for true religious freedom. He led young people in a massive unforgettable night vigil of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in London’s Hyde Park, and he beatified John Henry Newman in a glorious Mass at Cofton Park on the outskirts of Birmingham.

The year 2022 sees another major milestone in Britain’s story: the platinum jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. She has always been clear in her commitment to the Christian faith and spoken of it as central to her life and service.

So much has changed in the 70 years of her reign. While there has been progress in fields that include health and general prosperity, there is also much that is cause for great sadness: Britain is a country with too much violent crime, many unhappy young people, a drug crisis, a worrying suicide rate, and a collapse in a general understanding of many basic moral values, including the value of human life itself.

But the Christian message is still on offer and is the message that holds the hope of renewal; and in a country with a long history, and a tradition of marking anniversaries and jubilees, 2022 brings scope for missionary activity on a new scale. We must pray the opportunity is taken up. A reminder of that historic papal visit four decades ago is part of that.

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40th Anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s Visit to Manchester

On the 31 May 1982, St John Paul II, Pope from 1978-2005, visited Manchester. Today marks the 40th Anniversary of this very special day.

One year to the day since the failed assassination attempt took place against him, the enduringly popular pontiff celebrated Mass in Heaton Park on a monumental outdoor altar constructed for the occasion. More than 250,000 people attended this Mass! You can see some pictures from the visit here .

Pictured in this article are some of the paintings created by famous Salford artist Harold Riley to commemorate the visit.

Our Cathedral Treasurer Catherine Astin remembers the day the Pope came to Manchester:

I was in the Diocesan choir and I do remember that a few of us decided to get there early, really early, about midnight because we wanted to get a parking space and we thought thousands of people would be coming – which they did, but not at midnight! We was really cold and we were laying across chairs that had been put out, luckily I had a sheepskin coat and me and a friend in the choir were huddled together in my coat.

  It was a momentous occasion being the first time a reigning Pope had visited England, seeing the Pope-mobile wander round the park was very exciting and being in the choir we thought we would be close to all the action and get a good view of the Pope, but unfortunately we were quite a way away – it was a good job there were a lot of us and we were in good voice!  Seeing all the crowds of people who came to worship God in the park was quite awe inspiring and the Pope was a very charismatic leader.

  It was also my birthday so it will always be an extra special day in my life.

Thanks to Cath for this powerful account. I’m sure these emotions were shared by many in our parish and across the North West.

St John Paul II also ordained 12 priests during the Mass, saying:

You must be men of God, his close friends. You must develop daily patterns of prayer, and penance must be a regular part of your life.

This is a message that extends beyond our clergy, to all of us in the Church: to treat God with the care and attention we give to family and friends. St John Paul II, pray for us!

John Paul’s 1982 visit to Britain an "extraordinary event"

By Vatican News

“Saint John Paul II’s visit [to Britain in 1982] was an extraordinary event in the life of the Catholic Church in the UK,” writes Sally Axworthy, the British Ambassador to the Holy See.

Axworthy notes that it was the first time a reigning pontiff had ever set foot on British soil, and that the visit “marked a historic moment in UK-Holy See relations”.

The Holy Father visited nine cities in England, Wales and Scotland over the course of six days. In addition to his meeting with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace, highlights of the visit included addresses to young people in Cardiff and Edinburgh, and an open-air Mass in Glasgow that drew more than 300,000 participants.

“Ecumenism was central to his visit,” Axworthy says, noting John Paul’s visit to Canterbury Cathedral, where he met with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie.

“By attending the cathedral founded by St Augustine of Canterbury on his mission to England from Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century, St John Paul II made a powerful statement of the churches' determination to walk forward together,” she writes. “This ecumenical dialogue has flourished ever since.”

John Paul’s 1982 visit to Britain paved the way for future “great moments” in the life of the Church in the UK, including Pope Benedict XVI’s visit in 2010 and the canonisation of St John Henry Newman in 2019. The “legacy” of that visit, says Axworthy, “was the strengthening and deepening of the relationship between the UK and the Holy See that is bearing fruit today”.

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Milestones of a Monarch: The visit of Pope John Paul II

In May 1982, Pope John Paul II visited the United Kingdom marking the first visit there by a reigning Pope.

The visit was organised and largely funded by the Roman Catholic Church. It’s estimated it cost around £7 million at the time. This visit would be a pastoral visit rather than the state visit made by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. During the visit, the Church offered the public free access to all papal events. Security was of utmost importance at this time as, just a year before, John Paul II had been seriously injured in an assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square.

Landing at Gatwick Airport on the morning of Friday 28 May and after kissing the runway, the Pope was greeted by 3,500 singing children, Cardinal Basil Hume, Archbishop of Westminster, and Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. Also there at the runway to greet the Pope was the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, the Roman Catholic diocese in which the airport is located as well as Anglican Bishop, Eric Kemp of Chichester, the Anglican diocese where the Gatwick airport is located.

From the airport, the Pope travelled by train to Westminster Cathedral where he celebrated the first Mass of his visit. It was noted he departed from his prepared text on three different occasions. On one occasion, he called for peace in the Falklands and in Northern Ireland. The first day of the visit was also when he met, The Queen, who is also Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

During the visit to England, John Paul II visited Canterbury Cathedral, becoming the first pontiff to do so. He also had a historic meeting with the Prince of Wales before attending a ceremony with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Before leaving London, the Pope went through Wembley by means of procession for a Mass at Wembley Stadium in front of 80,000 people.

Other stops throughout the country included Coventry, Liverpool, and Manchester where he met with the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Sir Immanuel Jakobovits. In the city of York, the final stop of the England tour, about 20,000 people gathered for a Liturgy of the Word, at Knavesmire Racecourse.

Following the ceremony in York, the Pope flew to Edinburgh in Scotland where he met with 45,000 people at Murrayfield Stadium. In between Masses, he would take time to visit patients at St Joseph’s Hospital in Rosewell and, he met with educators at St Andrew’s College.

Finally, the trip ended with a visit to Wales where John Paul II was awarded the Freedom of Cardiff, an honour bestowed by the community on someone that is considered a valued member, or a visiting celebrity or dignitary.

Her Majesty The Queen had made history two years prior when she became the first British monarch to make a State Visit to the Vatican on 17 October 1980. Accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, she was welcomed by John Paul II at the door of his private library.

Two years later, Her Majesty invited the Pope to England, not for a state visit, but rather a visit “ to the Roman Catholic community in Great Britain where some four million of my people are members of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Pope John Paul II died on Saturday 2 April 2005 after he failed to recover from a throat operation. The Prince of Wales postponed his wedding to the Duchess of Cornwall by a day so he could attend the funeral.

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Delegation off to the Vatican to tell Pope: this is how we are tackling climate change in Manchester

• Ruth Peacock
• April 14, 2023

Exclusive by Rosie Dawson

Religious and civic leaders from Manchester are travelling to Rome next week for an audience with Pope Francis to pledge their commitment to tackling climate change.

The interfaith delegation is being led by the Dean of Manchester, Rogers Govender, and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salford, John Arnold.

Among those making the trip are: the Anglican Bishop of Manchester, David Walker; the mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham; Afzal Khan, MP for Manchester Gorton; and the Lord Mayor of Manchester, Donna Ludford.

Bishop John Arnold said: “By leading this delegation, we look to use our influence in the wider community, to people of all faiths and none, leading by example and sharing opportunities to learn from each other as we respond to the ecological crisis.

“We thank the Holy Father for his leadership in alerting the world’s attention to the urgent damage of the climate crisis. In his words, ‘Each and every one of us has our part to play’.”

The initiative for the visit came from Dean Rogers Govender. After overseeing the installation of ground source heat pumps in Manchester Cathedral 10 years ago, he founded the interfaith group “Our Faith, Our Planet” to explore how the city’s faith communities could address issues of climate change.

“The faith sector is a major player in Manchester’s efforts to meet the challenges of climate change,” the dean told the Religion Media Centre. “In the past we have made our submissions to the COP [ Conference of Parties ] process, and work closely with the mayor’s office through membership of the Manchester climate change partnership.”

Sukhbir Singh, a Sikh, and Nidhi Minocha, a Hindu, are also members of the partnership, which was established in 2018.

Andy Burnham said: “It will give me great pride to be at the Vatican to witness the historic moment our faith and civic leaders make our commitment to the Holy Father. This is the first time that all the faith leaders of Greater Manchester have come together with civic leaders to agree our pledge for a greener Greater Manchester region.”

The delegation will meet the Pope on the morning of Thursday 20 April and members of the “Our Faith, Our Planet” group will make several commitments to tackle climate change. These include supporting the use of renewable technology, reducing the carbon emissions from their places of worship, using their land to help to heal nature and to increase biodiversity, and encouraging their communities to engage in transformational behavioural change.

The meeting will be followed by a lunch with the British Ambassador to the Vatican.

Rabbi Robyn Ashworth-Steen from Manchester Reform Synagogue said: “Aside from the opportunity to meet the Pope, I am excited to spend dedicated time with colleagues and leaders from across Greater Manchester. To have politicians, civic leaders and faith leaders together should give us a unique space to have honest, challenging and productive conversations for us to take home and implement.”

Sukhbir Singh told the RMC: “There is one humanity. Interfaith communities working jointly can better serve our Waheguru [Lord] and our communities to create better a better society and environmentally friendly planet.”

Dean Rogers Govender , added: “The visit will be an encouragement and inspiration for us, but beyond that, the trip provides us with the opportunity to connect with each other and renew our commitment. So, while the trip itself will be important it is what we do afterwards that really matters.”

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The Way We Were: Pope John Paul’s park visit was a real blessing

Pope John Paul’s arrival in Heaton Park was part of the first visit to this country by a reigning pope.

• 14:23, 5 AUG 2013
• Updated 14:26, 5 AUG 2013

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As Pope Francis returns to Rome following his ground-breaking trip to Rio de Janeiro, where he celebrated Mass in front of  hundreds of thousands of people on Copacabana Beach, we remember one of his predecessor’s visits to Manchester. 

It was classified as a pastoral rather than a state occasion and was therefore funded by the Catholic Church rather than the Government.

Heaton Park has served many purposes over the years including a training ground for soldiers about to serve in The Great War.

As those brave men stomped around the muddy fields, they could never have known that, 70 years later, 12 other young men would be lying on the same spot, this time on the steps of an altar, about to be ordained by His Holiness Pope John Paul II.

On May 31, 1982,  Pope John Paul met the Chief Rabbi  of the UK, Sir Immanuel Jakobovits  at the Convent of the Poor Sisters of Nazareth in Prestwich, before travelling to Heaton Park where he was welcomed by more than 250,000 faithful.

Hundreds of people had camped for days to get a good view of the specially constructed open-air altar, waving banners with personal greetings including ’Ow Do John Paul.

Many remember the Papal visit as a highlight in the long history of distinguished events in the city.

And the historic moment is commemorated by a 16.5 ton boulder in the south side of the park.

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