Pope 'did not reject' invitation from EU

THE EUROPEAN Union's commission of Catholic bishops has denied that Benedict XVI rejected an invitation to address the European Parliament.
A spokesman for the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community said the Pope was never invited.
Last week the Times reported that Pope Benedict had been asked to give the opening address of "the year of intercultural dialogue" by the German President HansGert Pottering. The president had a private audience with Benedict XVI when he visited the Vatican last year. According to the report, this request was declined to prevent the Pope from becoming exhausted. The newspaper claimed that Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said earlier this year that the Pope would not address the parliament "at least for 2008. He didn't exclude a future date."
It suggested that this was part of a cooling of the Church to the European Union as a reaction to its increasingly secularist direction.
But Johanna Touzel, press officer of the European commission of bishops, said that the reports were untrue as the Holy Father had not been formally invited to give the talk.