Thousands greet Pope in Scotland

THOUSANDS attended an open-air mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI in Glasgow on the first day of a four-day tour of Britain.

However, smaller than expected crowds greeted Benedict XVI in Scotland, with the 60,000 people who lined his procession through Edinburgh in the Pope-mobile barely a third of the numbers who cheered Pope John Paul II in 1982. The biggest open-air mass of the tour in Glasgow saw around 70,000 of the planned for 100,000 worshippers attend.

The day was not without controversy after the pontiff appeared to associate Nazism and modern atheism in his address to the Queen in Edinburgh. He went on to urge Britain to guard against “aggressive forms of secularism”.