The Holy Father Returns from Britain

So much has been written by so many good people about His Holiness triumphant visit to Great Britain that we have nothing to add.

Father Z has many wonderful posts about the visit.

Raymond Arroyo, writing in National Review:

"The Pope saved the most important news of his visit to the United Kingdom for the end. Most people didn’t even hear or see it. But I imagine Thomas More and John Henry Newman were smiling . . .

In November of 2009, Pope Benedict XVI issued an extraordinary invitation to Anglicans disaffected by the changes taking place in their communion. The failure to affirm traditional Christian orthodoxy, the ordination of gays, and the recent push to create female Anglican bishops have splintered the communion and caused heartbreak among both clergy and laity....
With this understanding, the symbolic and stated message of Pope Benedict during his British sojourn comes into stark relief. His meeting with the Catholic and Anglican bishops at Lambeth Palace, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury for 800 years (the first 70 Archbishops of Canterbury were Catholics), his visit to Westminster Abbey (built by the Catholic king, Henry III and home to Benedictine monks until the Reformation), his moving speech at Westminster Hall (where Catholic martyrs Thomas More, Edmund Campion, Bishop John Fisher, and others were condemned to death for their refusal to disavow their faith), and finally his beatification of the 19th century Anglican convert to Catholicism, Blessed John Henry Newman suddenly all seems one piece. Benedict’s visit was a stand against relativism in the heart of Europe and a plea for Britain to return to herself — to return to her Catholic roots. In a visit worthy of his predecessor, Pope Benedict, with precise language and symbols, communicated a message that will long be felt in England. It was a message controversial and reasonable, bold, and utterly faithful — a simple call, really: England, come home to what you were, and truly are."

Hilary White, at LifeSiteNews

"And how did the British people, millions of whom followed the papal events on the BBC’s live feed on the internet and on television, react to the pope? “They listened,” said Fr. Hugh Allan, the superior of a community of priests, called Norbertine canons, in Chelmsford, Essex, who attended some of the events.

“They really wanted to hear him, and that is going to make the difference. I’ve heard it from so many people.”

On the phone today, Fr. Allan confirmed that the anti-pope crowd have badly lost the argument, and the sympathy of the British public with their months of shrill, fever-pitch attacks. The British people, he said, wanted to hear what the pope had to say.

“One of the most beautiful things has been to see an eighty-three year old man completely taking the wind out of the sails of the Peter Tatchells and the rest of the crowd,” Fr. Allan said....

The pope’s messages, that Christianity has a foundational place in the building of a just society, one that cannot be suppressed without destroying the foundations of freedom, were delivered fearlessly but gently, in a tone that one had to strain to hear and with an accent one had to concentrate to understand.

“He was just stating the truth,” Fr. Allan said. “It’s really swept people off their feet.”