Pope to be Charged With Crimes Against Humanity? (ya, probably not.)

According to an article from Irishtimes.com, two German lawyers, Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel, have initiated charges against Pope Benedict the 16th at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, alleging crimes against humanity. The pair submitted a 16,500 word document to the International Criminal Court's prosecutor, Dr Luis Moreno Ocampo last week, in which, they seek to raise charges against the pope, claiming he is responsible for,

"the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion which subjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats...the adherence to a fatal forbiddance of the use of condoms, even when the danger of HIV-AIDS infection exists...and...the establishment and maintenance of a worldwide system of cover-up of the sexual crimes committed by Catholic priests and their preferential treatment, which aids and abets ever new crimes."

Which Sailer and Hetzel described as,

“three worldwide crimes which until now have not been denounced . . . (as) the traditional reverence toward ‘ecclesiastical authority’ has clouded the sense of right and wrong”.

The pair also goes after the practice of baptism in the document, calling the practice a, "compulsory act", carried out on, "infants that do not yet have a will of their own”. An act which is considered “irrevocable” and is buttressed by threats of excommunication and the fires of hell. “a grave impairment of the personal freedom of development and of a person’s emotional and mental integrity”. And because the pope was “responsible for its preservation and enforcement and, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of his Church, he was jointly responsible” with Pope John Paul II.

Cases similar to the one being presented by Sailer and Hetzel have been brought to the ICC in the past, but none of them have ever made it to trial; and though there may be a chance that some of the most recent revelations about the catholic church and child molestation could be enough to convince the court to take the charges more seriously, it's far more likely that this newest case will suffer the same fate. But there's always hope I guess.

-CAINE-

Source: Irishtimes.com and Gather.com