John Paul II stands on the back of a British Leyland lorry that's been decked out as a popemobile and is bestowing blessings on the excited crowd lining the street.

In the crowd is a group led by Ian Paisley, the fiercely anti-papal Protestant Ulster leader. They hold aloft a placard which proclaims: "Anyone blessed by the Pope is condemned to Hell".

The Popemobile slowly passes the Paisleyites, as it does John Paul is unable to resist being naughty. With a mischievous twinkle in his eye he gives them his blessing.

And Paisley – by his own ordinance now destined to dwell forever in the place of perpetual fire – is fit to be tied...

The pontif from Poland was in Britain for six days. It was a historic visit in that no head of the Roman Catholic church had ever visited Britain before and was two years in the planning. While here, John Paul went to London, Canterbury, Manchester, Birmingham, York, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff and – as we have merrily seen – Liverpool.

In York, he addressed almost a quarter of a million pilgrims. The 250,000 included several thousands who renewed their marriage vows on the Knavesmire racecourse.

It was a memorable visit, but the highlight of the trip was Canterbury and John Paul's encounter with the then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie.

The primate met the pontif from his helicopter on a Canterbury school playing field. The Pope was amazed at the sunshine and as the two men approached Canterbury Cathedral, the visitor gazed in wonder at its glories. As the Roman Catholic and Anglican leaders entered the building there was an enormous explosion of welcome and praise which drowned the choir.

The Pope did not bless anyone, as he had blessed Paisley and his pals, but diplomatically left that to Runcie.

At the end of the service, John Paul approached former primates Donald Coggan, a past Bishop of Bradford, and Michael Ramsey, a past Archbishop of York and Canterbury. He kissed Lord Coggan and then moved onto Lord Ramsey. The crowd reacted spontaneously with thunderous applause.

At the start of the visit the Pope had tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Afterwards a story went the rounds that, when asked what she thought of the Holy Father, the Protestant Elizabeth II replied: "I found him an interesting old gentleman." The story is almost certainly apocryphal.

When Benedict XVI comes to Britain next year his visit will, by all accounts, be a State visit and John Paul's successor will not only have tea with the Queen, but stay at Buckingham Palace or some other royal residence.

With a state banquet thrown in, Sovereign and Supreme Pontif will have a better chance to get to know each other; and Elizabeth should find Benedict a very interesting old gentleman indeed.

Millions do. And inevitably, the millions include detractors and even bitter critics. Among those embittered by this one-time member of the Hitler Youth (in fairness, when AH ran Germany all German lads had to belong to the Hitler Youth) are more than a few thousands secularists and more than a few score fundamentalists.

To secularists, Joseph Ratzinger – Benedict's name before he became Pope – represents all that they most loathe and fear. Over the four-and-a-half years since he was elected to Peter's Chair, after one of the shortest conclaves ever, Benedict has shown himself to be the firm holder of the beliefs and attitudes that are the very opposite of beliefs and attitudes that these secularists hold most dear.

This son of a Bavarian policeman was plunged into one of the biggest storms of his pontificate when he readmitted to the church the crackpot British bishop Richard Williamson, a veteran Holocaust-denier and loather of most things modern.

Why did this pope of intense intellectual rigour want Williamson back? To the church's powerfully-entrenched liberal faction the answer is simple; Benedict, in his eagerness to pursue a conservative agenda, has tripped over and landed face first in the bad blood of long-standing Catholic-Jewish tensions.

Then, not long after becoming pope, there was his speech at Auschwitz in which he appeared to blame the Holocaust on a "gang of criminals" rather than on a broader German culpability.

After that in a lecture on faith and reason in his native Germany, Benedict quoted a Byzantine emperor's critique of Islam: "Show me what Muhammed has brought that is new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The result; anti-Catholic demonstrations all over the Muslim world. Fundamentalists see Benedict as Islamophobic They have not forgotten him quoting, with seeming approval, what the old emperor said.

When he comes to Britain next year some of the fundamentalists – (along with some homosexuals who see him as homophobic because of things he has said about them) – could be among the millions standing in the streets as he tours around.

It is to be hoped that if there are protests, they will be peaceful and involve no more than the holding up of some anti-papal banner in Liverpool or wherever. It is also to be hoped that Benedict XVI is not naive enough mischievously to bless the banner as he passes by.

Best start saying a few Hail Marys now.