Date confirmed for landmark papal visit to Britain

An historic visit to Britain by Pope Benedict XVI will take place from September 16 to 19 this year at the invitation of Queen Elizabeth II, Buckingham Palace said Tuesday.

Confirming for the first time officially the dates of the four-day tour, the statement said that the Pope would touch down in Edinburgh, Scotland, on September 16, where he will be received by the queen, DPA reported.

He will then travel to Glasgow, London and Coventry - a city whose whose bombed-out cathedral has become both a symbol of wartime destruction and reconciliation with Germany after World War II.

It will be the first papal visit to Britain since 1982, when Pope John Paul II's six-day tour drew large crowds.

Confirmation of the dates for the visit by the pope came amid a growing scandal over child abuse by Catholic priests in several European countries.