Pope John Paul II's 1982 visit to Britain

Pope John Paul II's 1982 visit to Britain serves as a brief but important point of comparison for the crowds drawn to the shrine in Banfield. The novel does not depict the visit itself; instead, Gerry Fenn recalls it while approaching the gathering, using a recent public event to measure an atmosphere that he comes to understand as something more than ordinary excitement.

A Benchmark for Public Gatherings

Fenn has left the traffic-bound road and is walking toward St. Joseph’s Church, where pilgrims are converging on the shrine. He observes that they include people singing hymns and praying, as well as visitors drawn by curiosity, the prospect of spectacle, or a desire for unusual experiences. Against this mixture of motives, the memory of Pope John Paul II's 1982 visit to Britain places the Banfield gathering within a recognizable sequence of mass public occasions. The comparison provides scale without suggesting that the two events are identical.

From Familiar Excitement to Distinctive Energy

The earlier visit is paired in Fenn’s recollection with the 1981 Royal Wedding in London: both offer precedents for the charged atmosphere of a large public gathering. But he judges the energy assembling around the shrine to have a peculiar potency of its own, intensifying as people converge on the site. The contrast matters because Fenn is no longer treating the crowd simply as a spectacle. He believes its collective energy is connected to Alice Pagett’s power, and to the earlier history of Einor.

Function in the Narrative

The remembered visit is not a separate scene or a source of factual detail about the Pope’s itinerary. Its function is to make Fenn’s interpretation legible: familiar national occasions help him recognize the force of a crowd, while the distinct character he assigns to the Banfield gathering points toward his theory of psychic energy and faith. The reference therefore links the shrine’s present-day pilgrimage to a recent public past, even as Fenn insists that the gathering has become something more potent and dangerous.