World's first papal visit plaid unveiled

Our phones have been ringing off the hook today with questions about the special tartan designed for the Pope's visit. Unveiled by Cardinal Keith O'Brien the tartan is called the St Ninian's Day Tartan and is woven right here in the Scottish Borders. The tartan is not yet available for purchase but it should be by the end of October and we will email all our registered customers to let you know. The tartan is a limited edition and has been specially-created to mark the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Edinburgh today.

The design draws on various sources of inspiraton. The white line on blue field draws upon Scotland's national colours, while the green reflects the lichens growing on the stones of Whithorn in Galloway. It was there that Ninian first brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to Scottish shores more than 1,600 years ago. The white lines are also accompanied by a pair of red lines, reflecting the colours of Cardinal John Newman's crest. And finally, the thin yellow lines in the tartan, together with the white, reflect the colours of the Vatican. In terms of the weaving, each white line on the green contains exactly eight threads, one for each Catholic diocese in Scotland. There are 452 threads in the design from pivot to pivot, representing the number of Catholic parishes. Cardinal Newman, who died in 1890 and is regarded as possibly the greatest religious figure of the last 200 years of British history, is to be beatified by the Pope in a ceremony in Birmingham on Saturday.