Scottish Catholics are being asked to dig deep to cover an £800,000 debt incurred by the Pope’s visit to Scotland.
Collections are expected to be organised on both sides of the border as the Catholic Church aims to cut by April next year a multi-million-pound shortfall left by the state visit to the UK.
In Scotland it is estimated the church has so far raised just under half of the £1.4 million contribution it is making to the £7m pastoral cost of the UK visit.
It would take a £4.30 donation from each of the 185,600 regular weekly Mass attendees in Scotland to cover the shortfall.
Across the UK, the church debt is between £3.5 million and £4 million.
Next week, letters are expected to go out to Scottish parishes appealing for increased efforts to raise the money needed to cover the cost.
The Government covered many of the costs of the four-day trip in September, which included 65,000 pilgrims gathering for Pope Benedict XVI’s open-air mass at Bellahouston Park.
The Church has until April next year to clear the debt.
It was hoped that a £20-a-head pilgrim contribution suggested in Scotland for those attending the Mass would help cover the costs.
Had Bellahouston Park’s capacity of 100,000 been reached, up to £20 million could have been raised this way.
Suggested donations for pilgrim pack admissions for those attending the prayer vigil in London’s Hyde Park were cut from £10 to £5 a matter of weeks before the visit because of complaints.
A spokesman for the church in Scotland said it believed it was “on target” to raise the money.
“The costs of the visit were obviously, if you like, sudden, in that there was a relatively short period to prepare, versus the situation in 1982 (when Pope John Paul II visited Glasgow) where you were talking about an 18 to 20-month lead-in time.“In comparison, we had less than half that this time round.
There were collections taken from people round about the time of the visit and there will probably be a couple of others between now and the end of this year as a final contribution to settle all outstanding costs. We always knew that to raise these sums of money you need about a year or so. We didn’t have a year, therefore, it wasn’t all raised in advance. We wouldn’t say we are short. We would say we are right on target to raise that.”
He said there was a mistaken belief that people were expected to pay £20 to attend the Mass.
“What happened was that parishes were told that to defray the costs of groups going to the Mass at Bellahouston we should try to raise funds and as a guideline they should aim to raise the equivalent of £20 per person,” he said.
“How they did that was utterly up to them. It could be a parish dance, a sale of work, or just a general collection.”
Apart from counting on contributions from dioceses to make up the shortfall, the Church is also relying on donations from the sale of the Magnificat papal visit prayer book, one million of which were printed.
The 1982 papal visit left the church £13m in debt as it had to foot the entire bill for the pastoral tour.
The Church has been asked for £7m for the September visit with a further £10m covered by the state – £3.7 million split between six Government departments, and £3.7m of costs coming from environment and energy budgets.
However, neither the state nor Church budgets included the costs of policing.
SIC: HS/UK
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