A SENIOR Roman Catholic clergyman from East Lancashire said it was a ‘shame’ the Pope’s ‘call to goodness’ was being overshadowed.

Pope Benedict said he wanted to ‘extend the hand of friendship’ to the whole of the UK after being welcomed by the Queen at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh yesterday.

Tens of thousands of people cheered and waved flags as he travelled through the city centre in the Popemobile, but there were also some protests on the first leg of a visit dogged by controversy.

Canon Harrison, of St Alban’s RC Church, Larkhill, Blackburn, said: “I am very pleased. It’s nice that he was invited.

“There has been all the controversy surrounding it, which is a great shame.

“But there was a thing on TV when they were talking about all the negativity, and somebody said ‘In the end he is a man dressed in white, with a message for good for all people’.

“I thought that in some respects, whatever people’s doubts are, you cannot really knock that.

“Despite all the other negatives he is a man who is striving to be a force for good.

“His message is for all people, a message of a life of good and goodness in the way one lives one life, whether one has any religious beliefs or not.

“It’s a call to goodness.” The canon said he was pleased the Pope had addressed the issue of priests’ sexual abuse of children.

He said: “I caught him saying he was devastated by the abuse taking place and it’s good to hear him say that.

“He has apologised, he is meeting people who have suffered abuse and he is reaching out.

“The church has made great strides in that respect, it’s in the vanguard of protecting children.”

Canon Harrison said he was not sure what the Pope meant by urging the UK to resist ‘aggressive atheism’.

And he said reported comments made by one of the Pope’s senior advisers, Cardinal Walter Kasper, who is said to have told a German magazine that arriving at Heathrow airport was like landing in a ‘Third World country’, were an ‘own goal’ if true.