A lookalike of the Protestant Reformation leader John Knox will welcome Pope Benedict to Scotland. Mike Merrit reports for the Daily Record (UK) July 25, 2010:
The actor has been hired by the Catholic Church to play the leader of Scotland's Protestant Reformation in a pageant of the country's historical figures. ..."I can only think that someone in the Catholic Church has taken leave of their senses and clearly has no concept of Knox's theology", muses Martin Hannan (Edinburgh Evening News July 27, 2010):Knox's surprise inclusion by Catholic Church leaders follows accusations that this year's 450th anniversary of the Reformation is being ignored by the Scottish Government.
The Reformation of 1560 revoked the Pope's authority in Scotland and banned Catholic Mass. ...
A Church of Scotland spokesman said: "It is a sign of a healthy nation that diversity within the Christian community is something to be celebrated as opposed to a source of division and struggle.
"It is a gift to those of us of a Protestant persuasion that by including this figure, the Catholic Church is contributing to the celebrations of the Reformation."
The man himself smashed "graven images" in churches across Scotland, and never sat for a portrait. He would find the prospect of a mummer playing him in a Papal cavalcade utterly offensive, and I suspect more than a few Protestants and not a few Catholics will be angered by this patronising gesture.(Regular roundups of news on Pope Benedict's visit to the UK may be found at here).
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