I AM not and never have been a member of the Roman Catholic Church. For most of us, our religion – and the denomination we follow – is very much a product of our upbringing.

I was christened into the Congregational Church, and regularly attended that church for the first 10 years of my life.

I then went to a school with a strong Anglican tradition – and have been an Anglican ever since. So I’m on the protestant side of the so-called ‘confessional divide,’ and the Roman Catholic Church is on the other.

But I’m as pleased as anyone that the Pope’s recent visit to Great Britain went as well as it did.

The Catholic flock in this country is large and important – nowhere more so In England than in Lancashire, with its long history of ‘recusant’ Catholics who maintained their faith (often against dreadful odds) despite the law requiring them to attend Anglican services, and to follow its Articles of Religion.

I welcome the Pope’s visit for two main reasons.

First, despite all the negative advance stories, the visit was positive, and it manage to generate debate about the importance of faith in our society.

Faith may not be for everyone. I often have the statistics on church attendance rammed down my throat by agnostics.

But millions more recognise the centrality of faith in holding our society together than go regularly to church on a Sunday. Some prominent atheists did their case no good by gratuitous insults about the Pope.

I do not agree with the Catholic Church on issues like celibacy, abortion, contraception.

It could and should have dealt with the child abuse in its midst more speedily and rigorously. But the Catholic Church does not have a monopoly on human frailty, and the selfless work of countless parish priests and lay people is a force for good in our society.

Second, the visit has helped to bury for good – I hope – anti-Catholic sentiment which was never far below the surface in England – and still more in Scotland (as well as Northern Ireland). Cardinal Newman (beatified by the Pope) converted to Catholicism only a few years after the ban on Catholics holding any kind of public office, and restrictions on their property rights, were lifted in 1828-9.

In practice, discrimination against Catholics continued until recent decades.

There was a divide.

Memories that Irish Catholics were brought into East Lancashire at the end of the 19th century to work as ‘scabs’ – strike-breakers – added to the divide.

I have Catholic friends who were told that a ‘mixed marriage’ was out of the question.

In turn, I was told that Catholics were to be avoided – but I was never told why. It was a notion which quickly evaporated when I got to know some of the girls at the Catholic high school down the road.

The original meaning of the word ‘catholic’ is ‘broad, wide-ranging’.

We need to hang on to that.

There is far more which to unite all the denominations of Christianity, and all the world religions, than ever should divide us.