Rites and wrongs

As Pope Benedict’s visit approaches, Katie Grant, a cradle Catholic, feels torn between her loyalty to the Church and anger at its callous insensitivity

In 2005, shortly after Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, my then 19-year-old daughter and I walked into St Peter’s in Rome. I don’t like St Peter’s, so superior and crushing, though the dead popes with their paper skin and velvet slippers offer a chilly thrill. I spied a confessional box in the dim distance and after I’d recited a dull list of sins, a young voice — urgent, American — asked, ‘Do you ever gossip?’ ‘Good Lord!’ I said. ‘I’ve got five sisters, and that’s what sisters do.’ Silence. ‘I suppose,’ I was a bit flustered now, ‘our gossip isn’t kind, but it’s not wicked.’ He disagreed. I slunk out like a murderer.

My daughter went in. Two minutes later she shot out, pelted the whole way down the basilica, through the doors and across St Peter’s Square.