Pope World Court Trial, Momentum Building

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U.N. Jurist Calls for Pope to be Tried in International Court
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Matt Cover, Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) – A United Nations jurist and former war crimes judge has called for the “full weight” of international law to be brought against Pope Benedict XVI because of sexual abuse cases involving some Catholic priests, calling into question the Vatican’s claim that the pope is immune from legal proceedings because he is a head of state...

Read the story at CNS
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Pope Benedict XVI and the church pedophile scandal: Q&A with David Gibson
The Star-Ledger - NJ.com (blog) - ‎Apr 13, 2010‎
By any objective standard the church has grossly violated the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child for decades. Is it time to formalize those violations ...

UN judge calls for prosecution of Pope Benedict Raw Story: "Geoffrey Robertson, a renowned human rights lawyer and United Nations jurist, wants to see Pope Benedict put on trial for allegedly protecting predator priests. In a Guardian UK piece making its rounds this week in Catholic circles, Robertson demanded the pope be "put in the dock."

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Vatican does not deserve UN status‎ - Daily Pioneer: ", it may be appropriate to seek a review of the unique status the Roman Catholic Church enjoys at the United Nations. The Vatican slipped into the UN in the guise of the Holy See, the Government of the Roman Catholic Church, and sits on that august body as a Non-member State Permanent Observer."

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The pope should stand trial
The Guardian - ‎Apr 13, 2010‎
""The young age of the petitioner" refers to Kiesle, then aged 38, not the age of any of the boys he tied up and raped (11 and 13). It is completely clear that, together with a nod to the welfare of the "young" priest, Ratzinger's primary concern, and the reason he refused to unfrock Kiesle (who went on to re-offend) was "the good of the universal church".

This pattern of putting church PR over and above the welfare of the children in its care (and what an understatement that is) is repeated over and over again in the cover-ups that are now coming to light, all over the world.

"We are serious. It should be for a court to decide – a civil court, not a whitewashing ecclesiastical court – whether the case against Ratzinger is as damning as it looks. If he is innocent, let him have the opportunity to demonstrate it in court. If he is guilty, let him face justice. Just like anybody else."

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The keyword is Law. Ever since the church gave refuge to Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston to spare him the inconvenience of answering questions under oath, it has invited the metastasis of this horror. And now the tumour has turned up just where you might have expected -- moving from the bosom to the very head of the church. And by what power or right is the fugitive cardinal shielded? Only by the original agreement between Benito Mussolini and the papacy that created the pseudo-state of Vatican City in the Lateran Treaty of 1929. This would be bad enough, except that it's now possible that Ratzinger himself may be held personally, as well as institutionally, responsible for obstructing justice and protecting and enabling pederasts.

Read More: Hitchens: Pope shouldn't decide criminality Calgary Herald - by Christopher Hitchens.

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UN Judge Says Pope Should be Prosecuted at International Criminal ...
By By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. , Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute
"Robertson insisted that the International Criminal Court could be used as long as the Pope’s sovereign immunity was waived and as long as jurists can show that the sex abuse scandal was carried out on a “widespread or systematic scale,” the way that child soldiers were used in the wars in Sierra Leone and the way that sex slaves are traded internationally."
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