Arrest The Pope

A voice from Sydney

George Pell | 19 April 2010

Cardinal George Pell, of Sydney, must know better than almost anyone else in the Catholic Church about the problem of sex abuse. He helped set up a rigorous system to deal with it in Australia. Then he himself was falsely accused. He stepped aside as Archbishop of Melbourne until he was completely exonerated by an independent judge. In this video he reflects on the controversy surrounding Pope Benedict.

Schadenfreude 101

Michael Cook | 19 April 2010

This clip from Der Untergang (Downfall) has been subtitled so many times that it should be called Schadenfreude. It is silly, triumphalistic, and unoriginal. Enjoy. Thanks to Damien Thompson, of the London Telegraph, for the tip.

Atheists in an existential crisis want to arrest Pope, says atheist

Michael Cook | 14 April 2010

More from the editor of the UK magazine Spiked, Brendan O'Neill, on the "hysterical" campaign to arrest the Pope. O'Neill describes himself as an "atheistic libertarian" and is a quasi-Marxist:

If the Vatican isn’t a sovereign state, can we bomb it?

Michael Cook | 14 April 2010

The Economist has a gift for simplifying complex situations and complicating seemingly simple ones. In its latest issue it offers an interesting angle on the argument that the Holy See is not a sovereign state advanced by British barrister Geoffrey Robertson ...

Could the Pope be arrested?

Michael Cook | 09 April 2010

The media’s favourite atheist, Christopher Hitchens, has called for an “international warrant” for the arrest of the Pope on charges of abetting sex abuse. Now the British-Australian celebrity human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who is also a high-ranking UN jurist, is using the crisis to call for the abolition of the Holy See’s status as an international state and possibly the indictment of the Pope before the International Criminal Court.