Posted on 04/04/2010 6:30:41 PM PDT by myknowledge
Protests are growing against Pope Benedict XVI's planned trip to Britain, where some lawyers question whether the Vatican's implicit statehood status should shield the Pope from prosecution over sex crimes by pedophile priests.
More than 10,000 people have signed a petition on Downing Street's website against the pope's four-day visit to England and Scotland in September, which will cost UK taxpayers an estimated STG15 million ($A25 million). The campaign has gained momentum as more Catholic sex abuse scandals have swept across Europe.
Although Benedict has not been accused of any crime, senior British lawyers are now examining whether the pontiff should have immunity as a head of state and whether he could be prosecuted under the principle of universal jurisdiction for an alleged systematic cover-up of sexual abuses by priests.
Universal jurisdiction - a concept in international law - allows judges to issue warrants for nearly any visitor accused of grievous crimes, no matter where they live. British judges are more open to the concept than those elsewhere.
Lawyers are divided over the immunity issue. Some say the Vatican isn't a true state, while others note the Vatican has national relations with about 170 countries, including Britain. The Vatican is also the only non-member to have permanent observer status at the UN.
Then again, no other top religious leaders enjoy the same UN privileges or immunity, so why should the pope?
David Crane, former chief prosecutor at the Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal, said it would be difficult to implicate the pope in anything criminal.
"It's a fascinating kind of academic, theoretical discussion," said Crane, who prosecuted Sierra Leone's Charles Taylor when he was head of state. "At this point, there's no liability at all."
But Geoffrey Robertson, who as a UN appeals judge delivered key decisions on the illegality of conscripting child soldiers and the invalidity of amnesties for war crimes, believes it could be time to challenge the immunity of the pope. He wrote a legal opinion on the topic that was published on Friday by the US news site The Daily Beast and on Saturday in the British newspaper the Guardian.
"Unlike in the United States, where the judges commonly uphold what the executive says, the British courts don't accept these things at face value," Robertson told AP. "The Vatican is not a state - it was a construct of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini."
But Jeffrey Lena, the California lawyer who argued - and won - head of state immunity for Benedict in US sex abuse cases, told AP: "Those who would claim that 'universal jurisdiction' could be asserted over the Pope appear to completely misunderstand the sorts of violations, such as genocide, which are required to assert such jurisdiction."
The law principle is rooted in the belief that certain crimes - such as genocide, war crimes, torture and crimes against humanity - are so serious that they are an offence against humanity and must be addressed.
If British judges do challenge the pope's immunity, there are a handful of possible legal scenarios - all of them speculative.
The pope could be served for a writ for civil damages, a complaint could be lodged with the International Criminal Court, or abuse victims could try to have Benedict arrested for crimes against humanity - perhaps the least likely scenario.
Robertson is more in favour of challenging the immunity question.
"Head of state immunity provides no protection in the International Criminal Court," said Robertson. "If acts of sexual abuse by priests are not isolated or sporadic events but part of a wide practice both known to and unpunished by their de facto-authority - ie the Catholic church... then the commander can be held criminally liable," Robertson said.
The pope plans to visit Malta, Portugal and Cyprus before travelling to Britain on September 16. A trip to Spain is planned for later in the autumn.
Why would they want them? As a whole, they're everything traditional Roman Catholics are trying to rid themselves of.
To paraphrase Gov. Palin as she addressed a heckler, these protesters should stick around, maybe they might learn something.
And it is more proof that this Pope is doing something right.
I also find it funny while these anti-Christian bigots whine about alleged child sex abuse within the Catholic Church, they say absolutely nothing about the child sex abuse that goes on in other religions. My only conclusion from that is that as long as it is a non-Catholic doing the abuse, then it is A-OK.
I'm starting to think this is yet another made-up conspiracy, which, as others have said, is all part of the ongoing attacks on Christianity and Christians that we have endured for the past 2000 years.
I think it is no accident that this proposed tactic is the same one proposed against Israeli heads of state who visit the U.K.
No.
athiest Jewish?
The Vatican needs to go to war against the rich homosexuals and far-left groups that are behind this coordinated smear campaign.
It would be unfair to say “nothing else.” Satan has coordinated himself with some people who were genuinely hurt and who have a valid cause before God about whether the man who is now pope shirked duties that are unique to a hierarchical church.
See also: ACLU.
I’m really not trying to start a Jewish-bashing thing, but with the NYT out front of the Pope-bashing might as well state the obvious.
Now that’s about enough criticism of our Jewish friends from me. I think there’s some of that happening, but I sure don’t want to take that too far. :)
But don’t forget left-leaning Jewish Americans are quite strongly pro-homosexual and did, vote 79% for Obama...
It moves me to marvel how many straw men get thrown up by devout Catholics when this topic comes up. There are duties unique to a hierarchical church.
I'm not a devout Catholic by any stretch, but I can't possibly believe that the Catholic Church is the only institution with this problem. Take islam for example, child sex abuse is practically condoned in that religion and yet you see no protests against it. Of course this does not excuse these crimes, but one can only concluded that it is anti-Catholic bigotry that is the driving force of these protests since child sex abuse by other religions is perfectly acceptable to these protesters.
I also wonder how many times the Catholic Church has to atone for these crimes? If those who committed the crimes were prosecuted, or these issues are beyond the realm of prosecution in the legal system, and if the Church has made efforts to reach legal settlements with the actual victims of abuse, then what more can be done?
It could in the end turn out to be no more than ugly rumor mongering, but somehow the notion that when the current pope was a bishop he winked at such drastically personally injurious practices in situations where he could have intervened, has to be credibly answered. It’s way past the point of keeping it quiet to avoid driving people out of what they believe is the only place to get a gospel of salvation.
The answer is not something like, “the members of the Southern Baptist Convention have an equal proportion of pedophile clergy.” (No I am not a Baptist.) Those hurt children in the former case didn’t go to the Baptist church. They went to the Catholic church. They are still crying in pain.
Yet they let Islam walk all over that country.
Islamophilic hypocrites...
This is all part of the muzzie takeover of the UK and the left’s attack on Christianity. The muzzies are co-opting the left and will use them until they’re no longer useful at which point they will be beheaded or, if they’re lucky, merely banished. The NYT is up to its eyeballs in this smear of Benedict because it’s so hateful of Christianity, particularly the strong pro-life wing. The NYT probably has no clue the extent to which this helps our Islamic enemies.....or maybe they do and that’s their goal. It really doesn’t matter.
You WOULD think, to be fair, the NYT would illustrate some of the sheikhly shenanigans that take place in both the Middle East and at home. It probably dwarfs that of Christian institutions of any stripe. But there’s no Islamic pope to take pot shots at so it’s less fun for them. Also they’d find themselves jihadees in short order.
Those inclined to get steamed up with negative generalisations about Britain on the basis of unrepresentative machinations such as those reported here will find, I predict, that in the event the Pope is welcomed to Britain with dignity, honour and warmth by British people and British institutions alike.
I agree. So let the anti-Christian left provide all the verifiable, credible evidence they have to prove this "story." Unless they can, then they are guilty of slander, and they deserve to be beaten back hard by the Vatican.
We can't simply presume that someone is guilty of something when the accuser won't provide credible, verifiable evidence of any wrongdoing and the party being accused won't mount a defense as a result.
It is unknown except to God and a few people whether the accusations are slander.
Generous settlements have assuaged much of their pain and that of their lawyers; entire dioceses have been bankrupted over this.
There has been explanation after explanation, new policy after new policy, apology after apology...and nothing is ever enough because the whole point is not to deal with the problem of child abuse, but to destroy the Church.
There is no way to go back in time and change things. Many of the responses of the Church were, unfortunately, just the same as the responses of the secular world at that time(therapy and a way too trusting treatment of offenders with children, and nearly complete tolerance of gay ephebophiles). The Church should have been different from secular society, but it wasn’t.
Curiously, I see no cry for apologies over Board of Ed policies that left sex offenders teaching in schools (because the unions protected their employment records), no apologies from courts that for years in the 1970s and 1980s gave laughably light sentences to child molesters and sexual psychopaths, no demand for apologies from people like Obama’s education administration candidate who was in favor of child sex...the people who are so “concerned” about child molestation are curiously selective in their outrage.
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