Evil English Tories diss our Cardinal

That's not quite how the media have put it, but pretty close...

From the Scotsman:

THE Catholic Church in Scotland has issued a stinging rebuke to the UK government after Cardinal Keith O’Brien was left out of an official delegation to the Vatican this week, despite the the head of the church in England and Wales being invited....

Cardinal O’Brien, who is in Rome on other business, is understood to be “angered” by the omission. Last night, a spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland said: “The fact that Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the President of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland and Britain’s senior Catholic, was not included in the UK government delegation which visited the Holy See is a most unfortunate oversight.”

Full article here. 

Difficult to add much. Of course, these things do happen, but, equally, it is the sort of thing that regularly tends to happen when London Ministers and Civil Servants forget the existence of North Britain. It's also the sort of thing that irritates most Scots and provides an emotional case for Nationalism. 

On the other hand, given the clarity of Cardinal O'Brien's resistance to social liberalism, perhaps it's Archbishop Nichols who really does need the face time with His Holiness...?