British Authors Explore Bringing Charges Against Pope - April 12, 2010

Richard Dawkins is best known for being the author of two best-selling anti-religion books The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene.  Christopher Hitchens is an English journalist and exponent of a movement that has come to be known as “new atheism.  In 2007 he published the book God is not Great: The Case Against Religion.  The two Englishmen have recently commissioned lawyers Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens to explore ways of taking legal actions against Pope Benedict.

The Pope is scheduled to visit Britain from September 16 to 19, his first official visit there and the first papal visit since Pope John Paul II’s pastoral visit in 1982.  He will be visiting London, Glasgow and Coventry.

The lawyers deal with human rights issues, and Dawkins and Hitchens have asked them to examine whether charges can be brought against the Pope.  Their goal is to force the Pope to face questions regarding the child abuse scandal that is currently hitting the church.  The Catholic Church has rejected claims that the pope helped cover up abuse by priests and instead lashed back at the press by accusing it of a “despicable campaign of defamation” against him.

The international news company Reuters contacted Mark Stevens, asking what action they were possibly planning on taking against the Pope.  In an email reply, the lawyer stated “there are three possible approaches: a complaint to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, a private or public prosecution "for crimes against humanity" or a civil case.”

While heads of state have diplomatic immunity against such charges, and the Pope is head of state for the Vatican, which is an independent political entity, the status of the Vatican at the United Nations is that of “permanent observer.”  It does not have full membership or voting status, nor does it have borders that are policed.  Stevens and Robertson argue that this means the Pope does not have diplomatic immunity.

Dawkins and Hitchens believe the Pope should face criminal charges because his “first instinct” was to protect the church rather than the children in its care.  Hitchens said “This man is not above or outside the law. The institutionalised 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.”  They are hoping to exploit that the same legal principle used to arrest the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when he visited Britain in 1998.

Share on

Latest Articles

• Bringing the World to Israel - September 2, 2010
• Group Traveling to Israel Explores Joppa - September 1, 2010
• UK Study Finds Decisions by Non-Religious Doctors May Hasten Death - August 31, 2010