Dawkins and Hitchens plan to arrest Pope
RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”.
Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.
The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998.
The Pope was embroiled in new controversy this weekend over a letter he signed arguing that the “good of the universal church” should be considered against the defrocking of an American priest who committed sex offences against two boys. It was dated 1985, when he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases.
Continues: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7094310.ece
Good luck to them, but he’s a slippery customer. Persuading the authorities to act swiftly, before he leaves, will be nigh on impossible.
Although I don’t think this campaign will achieve it’s main goal, it will be very helpful in publicising the fact that there are a lot of people not happy about this man coming here, and even less happy that we are being forced to pay for it. It also made me smile when I heard about it on the news this morning, made a change from the usual doom and gloom!
This could mark a turning point in the status of the office of the pope in terms of how people and policy makers regard it. If Ratzinger visits, will the English court’s decision create a precident which other countries have to follow?
Ricard Dawkins has spoken to the Times Online. He never said he would arrest the pope. He supports fully the case that will be made by Geoffrey Robertson QC and others that the Pope is not a Head of State and is therefore not protected in the diplomatic sense. If the Pope is arrested should such a case be successfully made, Richard Dawkins will be happy with the outcome. So will I.