pope's visit to scotland 1982

The day Edinburgh turned out in force to welcome Pope John Paul II in 1982

History was made 40 years ago this month, as Edinburgh witnessed the first ever visit of a reigning pope.

• 09:06, 18 MAY 2022
• Updated 18:00, 22 MAY 2022

The red carpet was out on May 31, 1982, in preparation for the arrival of Pope John Paul II at Turnhouse Airport.

His Holiness had touched down in Great Britain three days earlier, visiting London, Liverpool, Manchester and York before heading north of the border.

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In Edinburgh, throngs of people lined the procession route as the Vatican’s iconic popemobile made its way to Murrayfield Stadium where a youth rally of 45,000 witnessed the Pope deliver an address .

“Thank you for such warm words of welcome,” the Pope told the mostly young crowd.

“I am happy that my first contact is with you, the pride of your beloved country and the promise of its bright future.”

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Later that day, the Pope joined a gathering of priests and religious leaders at St Mary’s Cathedral and waved to crowds of locals cramming both sides of Princes Street in scorching heat. Police kept the crowds back as the popemobile was escorted up the Mound.

The Pope also visited St Joseph’s Hospital in Rosewell, where he greeted patients, staff and the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, and addressed the Scottish Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

All in all, it was a highly-memorable day for all who witnessed it.

Recalling the Pope’s historic visit, Sylvia Cameron, 73, told Edinburgh Live: “Everything about that day to me is so vivid. It was an absolute privilege to witness the Pope going by in his popemobile along Princes Street.

“Even now, 40 years on, I get quite teary thinking about it.”

The following day, Pope John Paul II headed west to Glasgow, where the reception was even greater.

In what remains the largest ever official gathering of people witnessed in Scotland, a whopping 300,000 people turned out at Bellahouston Park to attend a mass delivered by the Pope.

Symbolic gifts were presented to the Pope during the service, including a pipe banner with the Pope’s coat of arms, a piece of Caithness glass, a firkin of whisky and a Scotland football shirt.

He told worshippers "as believers, we are constantly exposed to pressures by modern society which would compel us to conform to the standards of this secular age, substitute new proprieties, restrict our aspirations at risk of compromising our Christian conscience."

We can only imagine His Holiness wearing his new Scotland jersey back in the Vatican a few weeks later to celebrate David Narey’s toe-poke against Brazil in the World Cup.

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Remembering when Glasgow welcomed Pope John Paul II to Bellahouston Park with crowds of 300,000 people

Forty years ago this week, Pope John Paul II became the first pope to visit Scotland and was welcomed by crowds of 300,000 people at Bellahouston Park.

• 13:32, 29 MAY 2022
• Updated 13:33, 29 MAY 2022

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On a swelteringly-hot day in June 1982, Pope John Paul II visited Glasgow - and it wasn't a trip the late pontiff would forget in a hurry.

Pope John Paul II was the first reigning Pope to visit the UK when he landed at Gatwick Airport on May 28, 1982 - 40 years ago this week.

During his time here, he stopped off at nine cities across the country and delivered 16 addresses. Among the events were a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, a meeting with the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and five large open air Masses in London, Cardiff, Manchester, Coventry, and most importantly - Glasgow.

An estimated 300,000 people flocked to Bellahouston Park , the biggest crowd that has ever gathered in Scotland. On a sweltering day on June 1, applause for the Pope lasted seven minutes as he attempted to address the congregation.

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Security for the event was high, with an attempt on his life having taken place the previous year. 7,000 stewards and 6,000 police officers were on hand at Bellahouston to ensure safety.

During the mass, John Paul II was offered several gifts including a firkin of whisky, a Scotland football shirt, and a football. The Pope told crowds: “We find it harder to follow Christ today than appears to have been the case before.

“As believers, we are constantly exposed to pressures by modern society which would compel us to conform to the standards of this secular age, substitute new properties, restrict our aspirations at risk of compromising our Christian conscience.

He continued: “Beloved people of Scotland, in conclusion, I wish you and all who are dear to you, wherever they may be, the abundance of God’s blessings, so that your families may prosper and peace and harmony may reign in your homes.”

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While it may have been one of the largest attended events in Scottish history, it very nearly didn’t happen at all. The itinerary for the visit was drafted 42 times before the Vatican finally approved it, with the final plans costing around £7 million.

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Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands, and the following war between Britain and Argentina, almost put the brakes on the trip. It was decided that the pontiff would not meet then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and the visit went ahead without issue.

Before making his way to Glasgow, Pope John Paul II landed at RAF Turnhouse and headed to Murrayfield Stadium to meet with 45,000 young people and leaders of Protestant churches. He topped off the day with a visit to Edinburgh’s Catholic cathedral.

En route to Glasgow, Pope John Paul II stopped off at St Joseph’s Hospital in Rosewell to visit patients, before addressing educators at St Andrew’s College in Glasgow.

After the outdoor Mass at Bellahouston, he moved on to Wales, where he was awarded the Freedom of Cardiff.

It was almost 30 years later before a Pope would return to Scotland, when Pope Benedict XVI came on a state visit. In 2010, he met the Queen for the first time at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh.

The following day, he was greeted by the Archbishop of Glasgow for a ticketed Mass in Bellahouston Park. With Susan Boyle and Michelle McManus opening the event with performances, the event saw much less attendance with 65,000 people in the crowd.

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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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Were you in Edinburgh when the Pope visited in 1982?

Ahead of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Edinburgh on Thursday, we're looking to gather a collection of pictures from the previous tour in 1982.

John Paul II landed in the UK on 28 May in what was the first Papal visit to the UK in over 400 years.

He was greeted by thousands of school children at Murrayfield stadium on what photographs and videos tell us was a sunny day in the city.

Where were you when the Pope was last in town? We want to hear from anybody who remembers the last visit to Edinburgh. Whether you have pictures or memories to share, please get in touch . The Murrayfield visit was followed by his attendance at a gathering for priests and religious leaders, before trips to Saint Joseph's Hospital in Rosewell and the Bishops' Conference in Edinburgh.

And just as with this year's plans, his Scottish tour ended with an open air Mass at Bellahouston Park .

Personally, his last visit came two years before I was born, so perhaps you can bring to life what those of us who are younger than 28 have read online and in the papers recently.

Did Edinburgh come to a standstill? Feel free to add your comments below or email me at [email protected] .

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The day 300,000 saw the Pope give mass in Bellahouston Park

Scotland welcomed a serving Pope for the first time on this day in 1982.

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On this day in 1982, Scotland welcomed a serving Pope for the first time.

Around 300,000 people gathered in Bellahouston Park in the scorching heat for a much-anticipated Papal Mass celebrated by John Paul II, believed to be the largest crowd ever to assemble in Scotland.

The £7m pilgrimage to the UK – funded by the Catholic Church – saw the Pope visit nine cities and deliver 16 addresses, including a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and a joint service with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

He touched down at Gatwick Airport on May 28, 1982, kissing the tarmac upon his arrival as more than 3,500 children greeted him in song.

During his stay in Scotland, the Pope visited seven venues and addressed hundreds of thousands. He spoke in front of 45,000 children at Murrayfield, met patients at St Joseph’s Hospital in Rosewell and attended the former priests’ training facility at St Andrew’s College in Glasgow.

He was whisked by helicopter to the city’s southside for the open-air Mass, where the crowds waited patiently on the hottest day of the year. The worshippers were guarded by 7,000 stewards and 6,000 police; security was tight after an attempt on John Paul II’s life in St Peter’s Square the previous year.

As the temperature soared, dozens of people were treated for dehydration and heatstroke. More than 1,000 priests delivered communion as a thousand-strong choir sang hymns through the blistering heat. 

It was hard to get a word in edgeways for the pontiff as the congregation applauded him continuously for seven minutes.

He preached: “As believers, we are constantly exposed to pressures by modern society which would compel us to conform to the standards of this secular age, substitute new proprieties, restrict our aspirations at risk of compromising our Christian conscience.”

His final words that day were: “And for your dearly beloved Scottish homeland I wish to adapt and make my own the words familiar to many of you. ‘Lord, let Scotland flourish through the preaching of Thy word and the praising of Thy name!’.”

The Pope was presented with gifts during the service, including a pipe banner with his coat of arms, a piece of Caithness glass, a firkin of whisky and a Scotland football top.

The record-breaking event was followed by a state visit to the UK by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, whose Mass drew 70,000 – far less than the 100,000 it was originally hoped would flock to Bellahouston Park.

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St Patrick's Catholic Church

The visit of Pope Saint John Paul II to the UK in 1982 was the first visit ever by a reigning Pope to this country. T he visit was by far the most important event for Catholics since their emancipation following over a century of progressive repeal of most of the discriminatory and oppressive legislation in the UK which, for nearly 300 years since the Reformation, had outlawed Catholicism, suppressed the faithful and stripped the Church of her properties and land. During this gradual emancipation the Vatican had restored the Hierarchy to England & Wales and Scotland and returned them to the jurisdiction of 'normal' Church governance in recognition of a more liberal and tolerant society since the end of the 19th Century. The visit was pastoral for the people but was historically significant in so far as there was a symbolic reconciliation between Rome and Church of England and the normalisation of relations with the Church of Scotland.

The Pope arrived in the UK on Friday 28th May, and during his tour visited nine cities, delivering 16 major addresses. Significantly, he met with the Queen and held a joint service alongside the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie at Canterbury Cathedral, a once great Catholic shrine. In Scotland the Pope was greeted on the steps outside the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at The Mound in Edinburgh.

He went on to say five large open air Masses in London, Coventry, Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff.  Following his six-day visit which took him to locations in England, Scotland and Wales but not Northern Ireland, he returned to the Vatican on 2nd of June.

The Pope's visit to Scotland began on the evening of Monday 31st May 1982 when he landed at Edinburgh airport. He then went onto Murryfield Stadium to meet and speak with 45,000 young people gathered there who had just had Mass said before the Pope arrived. The Pope then met with the Moderator of the Church of Scotland and the leaders of other Protestant churches before finishing the day with a visit to St Mary's Catholic cathedral in Edinburgh. John Paul II then stayed overnight at St Bennet's in Greenhill Gardens, the official residence of the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh.

The centrepiece of the visit was an open-air Mass in Glasgow the following day, Tuesday 1st  June. The day began in Edinburgh with a visit to patients at St Joseph's Hospital in Rosewell followed by an address to teachers and educationalists at St Andrew's college Bearsden in Glasgow. Afterwards he celebrated Mass at Bellahouston Park for over 300,000 people. 

The weather that day was outstanding and the people of St Patrick's Kilsyth had provided a large contingent of Stewards for crowd control and almost 50 men of Kilsyth's Columban Singers both Catholic and Protestant, took their place amongst the choir. For those not working as a Steward or signing in the choir there were a large number of parishioners who went just simply as pilgrims to Bellahouston to see their Pope and take part in an historic day!

At Bellahouston Park, Glasgow

Papal Visit to Scotland 1982 - John Paul II kisses the ground at Edinburgh Airport with Cardinal Gordon Gray standing beside him.

The Pope in Bellahouston Park

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The Papal Visit 1982

Posted by The Celtic Underground | Sep 12, 2010 | Season 2010-2011 | 0 |

For my parents’ generation this visit was to be of great significance. Given the sectarian nature of a Glasgow upbringing and the whole west of Scotland problem which pervades this small country it was felt that a Papal visit to these shores would never happen. To say they were overjoyed was an under statement.

Naturally there were dissenting voices, driven mainly by the fiery Glaswegian minister Pastor Jack Glass. He was infamous for travelling to Dublin airport in September 1979 for another Papal visit to chastise the thousands of Scots disembarking from the airport for the visit, bawling at them that the Pope was this, that and the other. The good natured replies of ‘Hullawrer Jack, hauzitgaun pal ?’ were perhaps not what he had in mind when the desired sore face was not forthcoming for the cameras.

There were more serious protests. In mid February 1981 Ian Paisley stormed across the sea to rally the troops. A huge protest demonstration was held in Glasgow but, in truth, not that many paid attention to it and that march was usurped by an even bigger trade union march the next week in protest over Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government.

When it was announced that some trees would have to be felled in the Park to accommodate the massive crowd for the Papal visit no one had perhaps appreciated the amount of horticulturist interest in Glasgow given the howls of outrage. The authorities calmed it all by announcing that even more trees would be planted after the event and that the park would ultimately benefit in the long run.

Some of you may recall travelling on buses and trains at the time and seeing wee circular red , white and blue stickers with the message ‘No Pope in Scotland’ on them. It was pretty pathetic really and was perhaps the advent of the ‘permarage’ mentality that we can often witness today on line. 

In April another significant event occurred. Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and Britain declared war. With the Papal visit a matter of only weeks senior diplomats scurried around for a solution whilst my Father and his generation viewed the Falklands incident as a beastly conspiracy theory on the basis that the British establishment was trying to jeopardise John Paul’s visit.

Happily enough, a simple solution was found. John Paul would come to the UK but would visit Argentina shortly afterwards, quickly showing the world that the church would be seen taking no sides in this conflict, and he reprimanded both country’s governments for the folly of the war and their reluctance to find a diplomatic settlement.

Britain was a country in turmoil in 1982. Prime Minister Thatcher was in the early throes of her period of government and with the Northern Ireland problem, inner city riots (though none curiously in Scotland), industrial disputes, rampant unemployment  and, of course, the Falklands. Most ordinary people looked forward to the Papal visit with anticipation to brighten the gloomy domestic landscape. And eventually the time came…

Murrayfield saw John Paul’s first Scottish date. A youth mass had been organised and proved enormously popular with young Catholics. My own choice, as a 16 year old, was to either travel with the school party or with the local parish and I’m glad I went with the parish as we were designated seats for the stand. As three quarters of the then Murrayfield stadium was open terracing, it was to be a long day and although the weather was fine I was glad of that hard wooden seat and the shade that the stand provided.

The then Radio Clyde DJ Paul Coia, resplendently dressed in an all white suit, was the man charged with keeping the large crowd going until the Pope’s arrival. Shortly afterwards Coia was to be the first voice ever heard on the new TV station Channel 4. How time’s change. The highlight of the day was of the youngsters cheering every sentence John Paul uttered. Much to his frustration and then amusement he was cheered like a pop star and another memory of the day is of the entire stadium singing ‘He’s got the whole world in his hands’ as the Pontiff sat looking happily bemused.

It’s worth pointing out that in 1982 Pope John Paul II was probably the most recognisable person on the planet. Until the 1970’s previous Popes had sat in the Vatican and few had chosen to travel abroad and when they had they had not gone far. For Scots Catholics the Pope was an almost mystical figure and few would have even known what the Pope looked like up until the 1970’s.

John Paul changed all that by travelling extensively and taking himself to the people. He was caricatured in the TV series Spitting Image as being almost akin to a rock star with dark glasses, gold chain and an American accent, in view of the number of countries he had visited. This was not seen as offensive, more a recognition of how the man had become identifiable as the face of modern day Catholicism.

And so to Bellahouston Park on June 1 st 1982 and a scorching summer’s day fit for a crowd of a quarter of a million people. I was in St Anthony’s parish in Govan and a request was made in the diocese for people to volunteer for stewarding duties. My Father and I were stewards and were issued with wee, highly visible, red berets with the Papal insignia on them and I still have mine’s to this day.

Perhaps the one thing that people mostly recall from that day is of the wee girl (who had a slight disability) making her communion on the altar, viewed by everyone on huge screens. She struggled forward courageously without assistance as everyone cheered and willed her on. Sounds emotional ? You bet it was, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. An older friend of mine was married that summer and was given the opportunity of being wed on the altar that day but refrained, the thought of taking his vows in front of all those people was too much for him.

There was much talk of disruption by protestors on the day but ultimately there were only a dozen hardy loyalists with a union jack flag outside Ibrox, with a couple of policemen having them in full view, and they were not going to spoil the day for anyone.

Being 16, my friends and I looked to see if we could spy any of our Parkhead heroes. Celtic were champions in ’82 (that was a right good summer) and I believe we spotted Tommy Burns. Pat Bonner and George McCluskey amongst the crowd and this was confirmed in Tommy Burns’ book when he states that they all ended up in the Honour’s Three pub in Pollokshields afterwards.

After mass John Paul eventually flew off into the horizon in his helicopter and the 250,000 people who were there that day were left with the memory. The media moved on to focus on the World Cup in Spain (Scotland actually qualified for major tournaments in those days) and the country went back to relative normality

There were cheeky calls to rename the park in John Paul’s name but they were not serious and the Bellahouston park it remained. The structure for the altar remained for many years afterwards and could be seen from afar. On closer inspection recently it was covered with twenty eight years worth of teenage graffiti.

I’m told that when a new Celtic supporters’ club in Cardonald started for the new season in 1982 that they tried to register it as ‘The Bellahouston June 1 st ’. They were informed by Parkhead that the name was unsuitable and they became the Cardonald number one who left for many years from Howden’s bar on Paisley Road West.

Now a new Papal visit is almost upon us. The protests are slightly different these days with a growing secular movement objecting about how their taxes are going towards paying for a Papal visit. It may be slightly different to 1982 but the sour taste of intolerance is there all the same. I’m a tax payer too and if my taxes can uphold the Royal family, MP’s expenses, nuclear weapons, the war in Afghanistan and a growing army of unemployable rogues then we can quite easily afford any expense required for Pope Benedict.

Let us pray…for another memorable Papal visit to Scotland.

Oh, and a bit of good weather wouldn’t go amiss on the day if you’re listening up there…

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