From the Huffington Post:
Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, two of the world’s most prominent atheist intellectuals, are seeking means to try the pope for crimes against humanity, their lawyers confirmed this weekend.
The pair are said to be working with British lawyers to see if the pope can be arrested for his part in the alleged cover-up of widespread sexual abuse in the Catholic Church during a visit to the United Kingdom in September
The Vatican has suggested that the pope is immune to prosecution as he is a head of state – Dawkins and Hitchens suggest that he is not immune as the Vatican is not represented at the United Nations.
Hitchens told the Sunday Times of London: “This man is not above or outside the law. The 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.”
Dawkins and Hitchens are correct to assert that the Pope is not above or outside the law. Anyone connected to covering-up child rape ought to pay the societal consequences.
Oh, if only! I want a t-shirt with a picture of his mug shot!
About time someone came to this obvious conclusion. (It has always baffled me why Dawkins has not yet been put forward for a Stonewall award; far more deserving than the usual c?¥terie of Labour Party ‘luvvies’, but still…)
I can assure you, Mr Ratzinger will get an appropriate reception when he arrives in Britain in September. There is a very well organized program of demonstrations – by the National Secular Society, the British Humanist Association among others – which will follow him wherever he goes.
Unfortunately, the Vatican is a sovereign city-state (a disgrace in my opinion), so I guess we won’t see a search warrant. But I’d really like to see a NATO invasion of the Vatican. I’d bet the uncovering of all the secrets squirreled away in that place would finally blow the lid off the Catholic Church (and maybe all of Christianity) once and for all.
… a sovereign state created by Mussolini; its very existence is on shaky ground. Freeze their assets and cut off the electricity and water supply, when they can’t pay the bills on time.
I WISH they would try this b*****d for crimes against humanity. I’m sure that if a thorough search of the Vatican Archives and the Vatican itself were to be carried out, that the information which surfaces would curl the hair.
I would like to see Dawkins getting an award from the GLBT community. He and Hitchens are two of the few who have had the guts to come out and call for the Pope’s trial.