5th of November, the British and the Pope... Can a Catholic Ever Forget?

Today, 5th of November is a day no Catholice will ever forget! This date marks the day Britons still burn an effigy of the Pope - and do so, joyously, in public.

This is the story by Cristina Odone.

I first came to Britain in 1979, and promptly fell in love.  Wide-eyed and enthusiastic as only a 17 year old can be, raised on the Brontes, Dickens and Austen, I found romance in every corner of this green and pleasant land. The architecture, the rolling countryside, and oh, those wonderful traditions! Like a needy girlfriend, I desperately wanted to fit in, and worried that my mid-Atlantic accent (a mixture of Italian convent school and American high school) and my preppy clothes would single me out as foreign.

I was wrong. What distinguished me from the great majority of Britons I met was my faith. Being a Catholic marked me out as the "odd one" (my rather obvious nickname at college). I couldn't believe the prejudice I encountered. My first boyfriend's mother warned him that if he married me I would send all his money to Rome, to line the Vatican coffers.  The science teacher at school said he knew why I wasn't doing it for A Level: Catholics didn't believe in evolution. And a classmate who visited my room expressed surprise when she couldn't see a plastic Madonna or a candle in the mould of the bleeding heart of Jesus.

This wasn't Northern Ireland, but north Oxford. I was shocked, saddened – and then repulsed, as I watched a chanting jeering crowd on the telly hold up an effigy of the Pope, only to the set it alight. My beloved, civilised, romantic Britain had a dark streak running through it: anti-Popery.

When I later read history, I understood just how ingrained this bigotry was. Linda Colley's Britons was particularly shattering: we Catholics were the "outlandish" people ready to betray England to the Pope. Our allegiances were suspect, our mission clear: we prayed for the conversion of every Protestant we met.

I had hoped that my adopted homeland would overcome its ancient prejudice. It hasn't: even in 2013, Britons see the 5th of November as a chance to show my "outlandish" community that they hold it in contempt.