Letter: Pope is just a 'minority interest celebrity'

Now I know I'm going to be classed as an old misery or a killjoy, but I have just seen a headline saying "Cost to taxpayer of Pope's visit to Britain could soar to £12m".

My mother lives in Shropshire. Her local village group has just been kicked back for a miserable £2,000 grant to take the elderly to a market town they went to visit once a week, as they have done for more than 20 years, until the local authority cut their bus.

Now they have to sit in their houses alone instead.

We are in the middle of a recession where the poor could see their benefits cut, or worse.

People are losing their homes and frontline services are being affected.

And yet we squander a fortune on a minority interest celebrity who belongs to an organisation that is, probably, as well off as any other in the world today, whose leader has taken a disingenuous stance toward wrongdoings and, with his church and one of his top assistants, insults our country.

So please may I be forgiven if I feel total apathy towards his visit?

Keith Wood, Whitchurch