Foreign Office suspends diplomat Anjoum Noorani over memo mocking Pope
By Gordon Rayner, Telegraph
The diplomat who authorised a memo mocking the Pope has been suspended by the Foreign Office after Catholics reacted with fury to its contents.
Anjoum Noorani, 31, has been told to stay at home while the department carries out a misconduct investigation.
When the memo was first leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, the Foreign Office said the civil servant had merely been “moved to other duties”.
But high-ranking Catholics both here and in the Vatican expressed dismay that more serious disciplinary action had not been taken, putting the Foreign Office under immense pressure to respond.
Mr Noorani’s suspension is reported in today’s edition of the Catholic journal The Tablet …
The offending memo, titled “The Ideal Visit would see…”, was the result of a “brainstorm” session involving Mr Noorani and three junior members of the Papal Visit Team.
It suggested the Pope could launch his own range of condoms during his state visit in September, open an abortion clinic, bless a homosexual marriage and announce the sacking of “dodgy” bishops in the wake of the child abuse scandal within the Catholic church.
The document was emailed to Downing Street and to three Whitehall departments by Steven Mulvain, a 23-year-old Oxford graduate, with Mr Noorani’s blessing. Read here
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