Ex-UK PM Thatcher to meet Pope next week

London, May 22 (ANI): Former British Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher is to have a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in Rome next week.

The former Prime Minister will fly to Italy today to stay with Carla Powell whose husband Charles was her foreign policy adviser at Downing Street.

Lady Powell arranged the meeting with the Pope, which will take place next Wednesday (May 27).he meeting will come more than 30 years after Lady Thatcher first visited the Vatican, as Leader of the Opposition, to meet Pope Paul VI.

In November 1980 she met Pope John Paul II, the former Polish Cardinal, who agreed to put pressure on the Irish Republican inmates in the Maze prison who were on hunger strike. Lady Thatcher is going to Italy with her daughter Carol. (ANI)