Óttar
04-12-2010, 09:06 PM
From: http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/big-name-british-atheists-hellbent-on-arresting-pope/19435859
LONDON (April 12) -- Declaring that the pope is "not above the law," two of the world's most famous atheist activists are calling for the arrest of Pope Benedict XVI for crimes against humanity when he visits Britain later this year.
Biologist Richard Dawkins, author of best-selling anti-religious tracts like "The God Delusion," and essayist Christopher Hitchens, author of "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," are consulting with their lawyers in an attempt to build a case against the pope, whom they accuse of deliberately hiding evidence of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.
Last week, The Associated Press published a 1985 letter signed by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in which he dismissed pleas to defrock Stephen Kiesle, a Californian pedophile priest, citing "the good of the universal church."
Elisabetta Villa, Getty Images
Pope Benedict XVI plans to visit Britain in September. Atheist activists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have called for his arrest during the trip."This is a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence," Dawkins told the U.K.'s Sunday Times.
The Vatican has previously claimed that, as a head of state, the pope is immune from prosecution. However, the two atheists' lawyers have advised them that the pontiff is not the head of a state with full United Nations membership, meaning he could be arrested on British soil.
"I'm convinced we can get over the threshold of immunity," the pair's solicitor, Mark Stephens, told The Guardian. "The Vatican is not recognized as a state in international law. ... It was a construct of Mussolini, and when the Vatican first applied to become a member of the U.N., the U.S. said no. So as a sop they were given the status of permanent observers rather than full members."
The pope "is not above or outside the law," Hitchens told the Sunday Times. "Institutionalized concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs but justice and punishment."
Case history suggests that Hitchens and Dawkins' legal maneuvers could cause trouble for the pope, who plans to visit the U.K. Sept. 16 to 19. In 1998, the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested while on a trip to Britain. And last year pro-Palestinian campaigners successfully persuaded a British judge to issue an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, Israel's former foreign minister, for war crimes allegedly committed during the 2008-09 conflict in Gaza. (Livni subsequently canceled her planned trip to the U.K., and the warrant was dropped.)
Even if the pair's application for an arrest warrant is rejected, Pope Benedict's trip will likely be marred by noisy street demonstrations. The Protest the Pope campaign -- a coalition of gay rights groups, pro-choice organizations, feminists and the National Secular Society -- is planning rallies to challenge the Vatican's "reactionary" views and highlight the fact that the pontiff's visit is costing British taxpayers some $30 million.
"We believe that there is a case for Joseph Ratzinger to answer personally," campaign spokesman Gerard Phillips told AOL News. "We think that the pope should not be above the law, and support the actions of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins."
The move to arrest the pope capped another miserable week for the Vatican. On April 9, soon after the Kiesle letter emerged, a retired Italian bishop was quoted on the Italian Catholic Web site Pontifex accusing Jews of being behind the wave of sex-abuse allegations now crashing against the church.
Monsignor Giacomo Babini, bishop emeritus of Grossetto, Italy, told the site he believed "Zionists" were behind the attack because the criticism of the pope was "powerful and refined" in nature. (Neither Hitchens nor Dawkins is Jewish.)
"They do not want the church. They are its natural enemies," the 81-year-old Babini reportedly said. "Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers."
Babini later denied making anti-Semitic remarks "about our Jewish brothers," but Pontifex has said it will release the audiotape of the interview as proof.
Babini previously has been quoted on the Web site accusing Jews of exploiting the Holocaust.
LONDON (April 12) -- Declaring that the pope is "not above the law," two of the world's most famous atheist activists are calling for the arrest of Pope Benedict XVI for crimes against humanity when he visits Britain later this year.
Biologist Richard Dawkins, author of best-selling anti-religious tracts like "The God Delusion," and essayist Christopher Hitchens, author of "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," are consulting with their lawyers in an attempt to build a case against the pope, whom they accuse of deliberately hiding evidence of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.
Last week, The Associated Press published a 1985 letter signed by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in which he dismissed pleas to defrock Stephen Kiesle, a Californian pedophile priest, citing "the good of the universal church."
Elisabetta Villa, Getty Images
Pope Benedict XVI plans to visit Britain in September. Atheist activists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have called for his arrest during the trip."This is a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence," Dawkins told the U.K.'s Sunday Times.
The Vatican has previously claimed that, as a head of state, the pope is immune from prosecution. However, the two atheists' lawyers have advised them that the pontiff is not the head of a state with full United Nations membership, meaning he could be arrested on British soil.
"I'm convinced we can get over the threshold of immunity," the pair's solicitor, Mark Stephens, told The Guardian. "The Vatican is not recognized as a state in international law. ... It was a construct of Mussolini, and when the Vatican first applied to become a member of the U.N., the U.S. said no. So as a sop they were given the status of permanent observers rather than full members."
The pope "is not above or outside the law," Hitchens told the Sunday Times. "Institutionalized concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs but justice and punishment."
Case history suggests that Hitchens and Dawkins' legal maneuvers could cause trouble for the pope, who plans to visit the U.K. Sept. 16 to 19. In 1998, the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested while on a trip to Britain. And last year pro-Palestinian campaigners successfully persuaded a British judge to issue an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, Israel's former foreign minister, for war crimes allegedly committed during the 2008-09 conflict in Gaza. (Livni subsequently canceled her planned trip to the U.K., and the warrant was dropped.)
Even if the pair's application for an arrest warrant is rejected, Pope Benedict's trip will likely be marred by noisy street demonstrations. The Protest the Pope campaign -- a coalition of gay rights groups, pro-choice organizations, feminists and the National Secular Society -- is planning rallies to challenge the Vatican's "reactionary" views and highlight the fact that the pontiff's visit is costing British taxpayers some $30 million.
"We believe that there is a case for Joseph Ratzinger to answer personally," campaign spokesman Gerard Phillips told AOL News. "We think that the pope should not be above the law, and support the actions of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins."
The move to arrest the pope capped another miserable week for the Vatican. On April 9, soon after the Kiesle letter emerged, a retired Italian bishop was quoted on the Italian Catholic Web site Pontifex accusing Jews of being behind the wave of sex-abuse allegations now crashing against the church.
Monsignor Giacomo Babini, bishop emeritus of Grossetto, Italy, told the site he believed "Zionists" were behind the attack because the criticism of the pope was "powerful and refined" in nature. (Neither Hitchens nor Dawkins is Jewish.)
"They do not want the church. They are its natural enemies," the 81-year-old Babini reportedly said. "Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers."
Babini later denied making anti-Semitic remarks "about our Jewish brothers," but Pontifex has said it will release the audiotape of the interview as proof.
Babini previously has been quoted on the Web site accusing Jews of exploiting the Holocaust.