SuBo to perform for Papal audience

Susan Boyle is expected to sing for the Pope during his visit to Britain, it was announced today.

Boyle was catapulted from obscurity to global fame after appearing on last year's Britain's Got Talent contest on ITV1.

In April church leaders said they wanted Ms Boyle, who would be a "great asset" to the events planned for the Pontiff's visit in September, to sing in Glasgow.

Today a spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland said: "Negotiations are still under way but we expect Susan Boyle to perform as part of the Papal Mass at Bellahouston Park."

It will be the first Papal visit to Britain since 1982 when Pope John Paul II's six-day tour drew huge crowds. It will also be the first official Papal visit to Britain. The 1982 trip was a pastoral one.

Pope Benedict XVI will visit between September 16 and 19.

He will be received by the Queen, who is Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and the Duke of Edinburgh at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh on September 16.

Yesterday it was confirmed an open mass would be held at Bellahouston Park.

More than half of the 185,000 Catholics who attend Sunday services across Scotland will be able to attend the mass on September 16.

The 450 parishes in Scotland will receive a pro-rata allocation of places based on their mass attendance figures.

Thousands more are expected to line the route of the Pope's motorcade through Edinburgh earlier in the day. A St Ninian's Day Pageant in Edinburgh is also planned, with school children and pipe bands taking part.

The Pope's itinerary also includes an address at Westminster Hall in the Houses of Parliament and the beatification of the 19th century Roman Catholic convert Cardinal John Henry Newman at an open air Mass at Coventry Airport.

The move will bring the revered clergyman, who died in 1890, one step closer to becoming England's first non-martyred saint since the Reformation.

Boyle, a former church worker, became an international star when her performance of I Dreamed A Dream from the musical Les Miserables stunned the audience and judges on Britain's Got Talent last year. She eventually finished runner-up in the TV talent show.

Her album went straight to number one in the charts and achieved the best first week's sale for a debut.