Liverpool
Arrival and Mass
3.45pm, Sunday, 30 May 1982
Having flown by helicopter from Coventry, Pope John Paul II touched down at Liverpool’s Speke Airport at around 3.45pm.
From there it was a seven-mile journey into the city with some one million people lining the route.
After the ecumenical service and prayers at Canterbury Cathedral, the Pope again visited a key Anglican church, dropping in to say The Lord’s Prayer at Liverpool Cathedral before travelling across Hope Street to celebrate Mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King.
The Sacrament of Penance was chosen for the Mass and Pope John Paul II delivered a strong message of forgiveness in his homily:
“There is no sin that cannot be forgiven, if we approach the throne of mercy with humble and contrite hearts. No evil is more powerful than the infinite mercy of God. In becoming man, Jesus entered completely into our human experience, even to the point of suffering the final and most cruel effect of the power of sin – death on a cross.”
The Archbishop of Liverpool in 1982 was the Most Revd Derek Worlock.
In an interview plucked from the archives of the Archdiocese of Liverpool, he recalls how the papal visit was in jeopardy in light of the Falklands Conflict and how he travelled to Rome in a last-ditch attempt to make it happen:
“I was sent out by the bishops to try and see what I could save at the very last moment and [Pope John Paul II] was marvellous in cooperating and in calling to Rome the bishops and the Argentineans and so on, so that a package of about ten proposals could be put into effect. Eventually on the Monday before he was due to arrive, the decision was taken to go ahead because it was a pastoral visit and in no sense a political visit.”
Click here to listen to then Archbishop of Liverpool, the Most Revd Derek Worlock
Bishop Vincent Malone oversaw the organisation of many of the events falling in the Northern Province of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
He recalls the special bond Pope John Paul II had with young people and how this was shown beautifully after the Mass in Liverpool:
“[One of the things] that sticks in the mind is at the end of the Mass we’d arranged that the Piazza outside the Cathedral would be occupied by young people because there was a high pressure on spaces – so the plan was that after the Mass the Pope would go out of one of the emergency exits on to the Piazza to greet all the young people. He said various encouraging things to them.”
“[Because] Wojtyla and Worlock come close in the alphabet, the two of them had sat together on some committee in Rome and it had enabled Archbishop Worlock to talk to Karol, as he was known then, about the Cathedral that was being built in Liverpool. And so the Pope was able to say to these young people: ‘I have followed the story of the building of your Cathedral with great interest, but you are the living Cathedral of Christ the King’ – which of course got a great round of applause.”
Click here to listen to Bishop Vincent Malone on Pope John Paul II’s special connection with young people
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