Is the Pope...?

It won’t have escaped your notice that Westminster is playing host to a Very Important Visitor this weekend – Pope Benedict XVI, 265th successor to St Peter, the second non-Italian Pope since 1522 and only the second Pope to visit Britain (apparently the one British Pope, Adrian IV, showed no desire to come back and visit his old friends). So it seems a good opportunity to see what the internet can offer on the subject of matters spiritual.

First port of call is the official website of the Pope’s visit at where you can find his itinerary, details of road closures and a brief (and inevitably uncritical) biography. One of the reasons for the visit is the beatification of Cardinal Newman – if you’re interested you can look him up in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography in the Biography section of the Westminster Libraries Gateway. There’s an article on Pope Adrian VI too.

Next we move to the Beliefs & Customs section of the Gateway. The handy link to Religion from Credo Reference will take you straight through to a series of useful volumes on many religions. Ever wondered why lorry drivers often carry St Christopher medals or what the connection is between Santa Claus and pawnbrokers? Check out Who’s Who in Christianity to find out. Or perhaps you want to find out more about another religion – just what exactly was the Ark of the Covenant, perhaps? Let The New Encyclopaedia of Judaism tell all.

You appetite whetted, why not have a look at the sacred books of different religions and belief systems? One very useful resource, also linked from the Beliefs section of the Gateway is the Sacred Texts Archive. Here you can find the major books not just of religions (the Koran, the Bible, the book of Mormon, the Bhagavad Gita and so on but also various core texts relating to Freemasonry, Nostradamus and even the sagas which influenced JRR Tolkien. Sadly the Jedi religion isn’t yet represented but it’s only a matter of time…

One major resource, on the same page of the Gateway, is Oxford Islamic Studies Online. This is a major resource for all matters to do with Islam ranging from scholarly commentary on the Koran to a guide to What Everybody Needs to Know about Islam.

Moving away from the Belief page of the Gateway, if you’re interested in the news coverage of the last Papal visit, check out the News & Magazines section of the Gateway to see how the Guardian, Times, Daily Mirror or Daily Mirror covered the 6-day visit which started on 28th May 1982. Some things haven’t changed – there were protestors (led by the Rev Ian Paisley) and Britain was at war (in the Falklands).