Following the media right now you get the impression that Iain Paisley has nothing on the BBC-Guardian-C4-News axis of metropolitan secularism. Paisley would on occasion rant against the “Papal anti-Christ”, but the metropolitan media have in recent weeks created a caricature of the Pope more visceral because it is framed as progressive and reasonable. It is little more than atheist bigotry dressed up in rationalist clothes.

The Catholic Church and the Catholic laity are coming to terms and dealing with an evil conspiracy of silence within the priesthood which let the abuse of innocent children go unchecked for decades. Predatory paedophile priests have ruined the lives of hundreds if not thousands of Catholic children. Their reckoning will be eternal.

That terrible issue is being used as cover for editorial judgements that are motivated by entirely separate reasons. The Pope is being crucified in sections of the media as, and this is no exaggeration, an evil, dark, Nazi protector of paedophiles. This is not true and is deeply offensive to Catholics who are dealing with a painful history that has tested the faith of many. Our children are being constantly bombarded with messages from the secular media to distrust those good men that baptised them, offer them communion at mass every Sunday, confirm them in their faith, educate and marry them, comfort us in sickness, read us our last rites and bury us.

A lot of the media criticism is coloured purely by secular antipathy to the traditional values espoused by the Pope, because Catholicism favours a culture of life and family values inimical to the cultural mores of a Guardian editorial meeting. The 50 atheists in this morning’s Guardian are taking the Pope’s visit as an opportunity to kick at the spiritual leader of Roman Catholicism in a way they would never dare do to the Dalai Lama, who incidentally also favours a culture of life and traditional family values. The false characterisation of the Pope says more about his detractors than it does about him.