Papal postscript

I had some harsh words recently to say about Pope Benedict XVI. How easy it is to criticise someone you have never met! As is very well demonstrated by Brian Clarke’s First Person piece in Fridays’ Independent. (Of course it is not always the case that respect or warmth result from meeting: bizarrely, I met Robert Mugabe twice in the 1980s when I was working in Dillons Bookshop, in Gower Street London. Naturally, I refrained from asking about the massacre of the peoples of Matabeleland!)

However, I mean to be serious, and Brian Clarke’s piece should be read in exactly the spirit in which it is written.