Scottish Catholic Observer

The reverent pilgrim experience at both St Andrew’s Cathedral in Glasgow and Carfin Grotto to aid visitors in the veneration of the relics of St John Bosco—in Scotland for the first time last week—was a credit to event organisers and the Church in Scotland.

The fact that the UK leg of the 130-nation tour of the relics—which began in January 1999—kicked off in Scotland is also testament to the strength of the Church here and the Faith of Scottish Catholics.

Close to 2000 pilgrims, from school children from St John Bosco Primary School in Erskine to senior citizens from across Scotland, flocked to Glasgow to catch a rare sight of the relics of the Turin-born saint, founder of the Salesian Order. Don Bosco, whom in life had been invited to visit Glasgow, later became the patron saint of young people.

Archbishop Philip Tartaglia and Bishop Joseph Toal welcomed the relics and pilgrims to Glasgow.

The Carfin event on Saturday attracted even more pilgrims than normal to St Francis Xavier Church at Scotland’s national Marian shrine.

Prior to the arrival of the relics in Scotland, Fr Bob Garden, the Salsians’ UK communications officer, told the SCO that those attending would get to be part of a very special experience. He was certainly right. The relic tour is in preparation for the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Don Bosco’s birth, on August 16, 1815.

The year has only just begun but it has not taken long for the blight of anti-Catholicism to rear its ugly head in Scotland once again.

Duncan Morrow, the Scottish Government’s new anti-bigotry adviser, has directly addressed what is widely recognised as the root of widespread sectarianism in this country: “An embedded anti-Catholicism that isn’t going away in Scotland.” His view that ‘you can’t take religion out of it but certainly it’s not just about religion’ has, however, been rightly challenged by a senior Church official.

“Scotland has first and foremost a problem with anti-Catholicism,” Peter Kearney, director of the Scottish Catholic Media Office, stated this week. “This must be recognised and accepted before progress can be made.”

It remains of great concern that bodies such as Nil by Mouth, which receive the lion’s share of public anti-sectarianism funding, hold the view that ‘sectarianism in 21st-century Scotland has mutated beyond religion.’

It is 2013, it is time to tackle the root of ‘Scotland’s shame’—anti-Catholicism—and put the necessary attention and resources in the right place. Before the Christmas holidays, a break-in and repulsive vandalism at the Glasgow offices of John Deighan, the Scottish bishops’ parliamentary officer, leaves little doubt about the depth of religious hatred that Scottish Catholics face to this day.

Pic: Tom Eadie