Cool to be Catholic?

Like millions of Catholics around the world, I will always remember where I was when I heard the news that Pope John Paul II had died. I was sitting in the dining hall of New Hall College, Cambridge, enjoying my MA graduation dinner.

An Irish cream torte had just been placed in front of me - it was subsequently taken away, uneaten. While other graduates happily partied, the Catholic contingent sat in silence, taking in the news.

A few of us emotional foreigners wept. A group of us asked if the college president would hold a minute's silence, but she refused, apparently claiming that it might appear to show a preference towards Catholics and offend members of other faiths (a Muslim student told my fiancé that she hates anti-religious secularists using people like her as a fig-leaf for their own prejudices, but none of us doubted the real agenda).

When I told one of my fellow English graduates the news she laughed derisively in my face, apparently amused by either the Holy Father's death or the grief being expressed. This is England, I thought, and left it at that.

Growing up in the UK as a Maltese immigrant, I learnt very young that Catholics are one of the only minority groups left who can be openly abused and humiliated without risk of prosecution. Elderly members of my parish church can still remember their priest having stones and eggs thrown at him as he walked through the market in his cassock, and if the prejudice is less violent now, it is perhaps more insidious.

Commentators - usually not Catholics themselves - tell us that Catholics have never had it so good, as if we should actually be thankful for the fact that the authorities don't lock us up in dungeons, confiscate our property or hang our priests these days.

If, on the other hand, any of us have the temerity to express offence at journalists who suggest that Catholics are superstitious idiots who should not be trusted with responsible jobs or that priests should be imprisoned for refusing to break the seal of the confessional, we are branded as self-pitying ingrates.

I am considered to be the victim of discrimination if a racist calls me a 'Paki' or a 'filthy black b****' who should take the next boat home, but few regard me as having a right to practise my religion without harassment. I have never attended an open-air religious gathering in the UK, whether it be a procession or prayer service, where those gathered were not subjected to verbal abuse or intimidation. According to older Catholic friends who have attended such events for years, the abuse is getting more vocal, more offensive and more frequent.

While much was made of the depiction of Jews in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, no one bats an eyelid when contemporary Catholics are portrayed - either literally or by paper-thin analogy - as corrupt, murderous thugs by the likes of Dan Brown or Philip Pullman.

The usual excuse is that people know the difference between fact and fiction (which, when it comes to Catholicism at least, they usually don't) with the inference being that fiction has no influence on the way people think. Either that or the underlying understanding that no one really cares if Catholics suffer indirectly; it is probably all their fault. I am not the only Catholic in Britain who refuses to be grateful for this fake tolerance.

However, the week after the Pope's death brought quite a different atmosphere to London and I had to admit that my response on leaving college that evening may have been a little harsh. The Catholic community was in mourning and a lot of us, particularly those of us too young to remember any other Pope, felt orphaned.

It was painful and bewildering to go to Mass and for the first time not to hear the priest pray for 'John Paul our Pope', but what was surprising was the degree to which the country itself seemed to be sharing in that mourning. I was touched to receive condolences from friends from other faiths and none, as if the ecumenical outreach championed by John Paul II was being continued by members of other faiths reaching out to us in the wake of his death.

The tributes that came in through newspapers and television programmes were from people from all walks of life, with some beginning by saying: "I am not a believer but..." or even "I haven't been a practising Catholic for years, but now I know I must come home." From my office in Westminster, I could see the Union Jack flying above Parliament at half-mast - the same Parliament where laws were enacted against Popery long ago.

The Catholic enclave itself was busier than I ever remember it, with the piazza outside the Cathedral brimming with journalists and worshippers and the surrounding Catholic shops full of people buying books and pious objects. A friend who works in Catholic media told me that they were being inundated with people enquiring about the Catholic faith.

For the first time in living memory, the Catholic community in England and the faith it professes is being noted and celebrated. John Paul's work of evangelism has never been more palpable but we all know that interest is likely to wane again once the story of the Pope's death and the election of a new Pope pass.

The challenge now is for grassroots Catholics to continue to assert themselves and the Faith in a positive and attractive way so that the current enthusiasm bears fruit. Answering this challenge would be a more fitting testimony to the example of John Paul II than any entry in a book of condolence.