|TOP|The Vatican has dismissed reports that Pope Benedict XVI will visit Britain next year following a number of reports in British newspapers of a visit next year.

The Daily Mirror and the Daily Record reported that the Pope would visit Britain in September 2007 in what would be the first papal visit to the country since John Paul II in 1982.

Harry Conroy, of the Scottish Catholic Observer, said, however: "The Pope is to visit Brazil in July next year, so I think it would be highly unlikely that he would visit Britain a couple of months later. I think it is more likely to be 2008 before he comes to Britain."

The Catholic Church in Scotland is still hopeful that the Pope will make a visit to Scotland some time in the near future, after backing the formal invitation to the pontiff by the Catholic Church in England and Wales earlier in the month.

|AD|Cardinal Keith O’Brien, head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, said: "In the event that the Pope is able to accept the invitation from the bishops of England and Wales, the Bishops' Conference of Scotland will extend an invitation urging the Pope to spend some time in Scotland."

He added the Pope would be “welcomed most warmly” if he did embark on a visit north of the border.

One million people squeezed into Bellahouston Park in Glasgow to attend a mass when Pope John Paul II visited Scotland in 1982. He was greeted by a further 40,000 young people at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium.

The media reports this week of another papal visit were dismissed by the Vatican as “speculation”.

The office of the Archbishop of Westminster denied that its invitation to the Pope to visit Britain had been accepted.

"Archbishop's House has had no indication from Rome if Pope Benedict will visit the UK, nor, if he were to, when that would be," it stated.