FAQ

What do you think?

Do you want to get your point of view across to others? Whether you’re writing to the press, talking on a radio programme or discussing issues with others, this section is intended as a resource to some of the questions people have asked about the campaign or about the issues it raises.If you have a comment on the arguments presented here, have some questions of your own or want to share your own Q&As with others please contact us at inquiries@protest-the-pope.org.uk

Questions and Answers

(1) Do you want The Pope banned from Britain?
No. We do not want the Pope banned from Britain. We simply do not believe that his visits should be a State Visit. By contrast his predecessor’s visit to our country (John Paul II in 1982) was a pastoral visit. What has also upset many people is that this visit is to be paid for by the British tax payer. If he wants to finance his own trips – or if Catholics and other supporters in the UK wish to raise the money privately to sponsor his visit, that is up to them.

(2) What’s so bad about the visit being a State Visit?
The Pope has already shown us that he is going to use this visit to tell us how we all should live and to interfere in our laws (ref. the attack on the Government’s draft Equality Bill in February 2010). No other head of state would be allowed to do this. But then no other head of state is also the leader of a world religion. It is ironic, given the Pope’s latest attack on our democracy, that he expected to address MPs in Parliament when he visits. We think this is an abuse of the Pope’s position.Further, the state of which he is head has been responsible for:

• opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of AIDS
• promoting segregated education
• denying abortion to even the most vulnerable women
• opposing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights, including universal decriminalisation of homosexuality
• failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation.
• rehabilitating holocaust deniers and appeasers like bishop Richard Williamson and the war-time Pope, Pius XII.

The state of which the Pope is the head has also resisted signing many major human rights treaties and has formed its own treaties (‘concordats’) with many states which negatively affect the human rights of citizens of those states.As a head of state, the Pope is an unsuitable guest of the UK government and should not be accorded the honour and recognition of a state visit to our country.

(3) Are you not attacking the Pope’s freedom of speech?
No. The Pope, as a citizen of Europe and the leader of a religion with many adherents in the UK, is of course free to enter and tour our country. He is free to visit the UK and address his supporters at his own expense – or theirs. The British tax-paying public, made up of people of many different religions and none, should not have to pay for sectarian religious leaders to visit the country. State visits should be secular, non-sectarian events.

(4) Isn’t focusing on the Pope a bit personal?
It’s not just that this Pope is more reactionary than previous popes (which he is) but that the policies and practices of the Catholic Church are considered so damaging and divisive, both to Catholics and non-Catholics. The Pope does have a personal responsibility in this, as he is effectively an autocrat who rules the Church (and the Vatican State) much as any medieval monarch once did, though he no longer has the power to kill or imprison people and start wars. (For a detailed exposition of the state of the Catholic Church read David Ranan’s book, ‘Double Cross: The Code of the Catholic Church’, available from the National Secular Society bookshop.)

(5) Does the Pope need our money?
No. The visit will cost millions of pounds that could be used for health, education or other hard pressed services. By contrast the Vatican is extremely wealthy. The finances of the Catholic Church are entirely opaque and mired in controversy so no one outside the Church can be sure how wealthy it really is. We do know that the Italian tax payers alone give the Vatican about &euro 1000 million every year. A recent estimate (broadcast by the Penn & Teller documentary) put the total of the Catholic Church’s assets at US $50 billion.

(6) Isn’t the Vatican a real State?
Yes, legally, but it is unique. The Vatican is an artificial State inhabited mainly by priests. It was established by the Lateran Treaty in 1929 with the Fascist dictator Mussolini and covers 109 acres in the centre of Rome. It is extremely powerful and its “moral” crusades adversely affect the lives of millions of people in Europe and in the world. Officially part of the UN, its “observer-state” status means it engages in UN debates on a variety of issues ranging from favourites, such as birth control, abortion and homosexuality, to the environment, war and global trade. The Vatican has diplomatic relationships with almost all the Countries in the world (174 when John Paul II died) and in many EU countries they benefit from the support of Catholic politicians or in many cases of Christian political parties. Of the 27 countries of the European Union, 14 are bound to the Vatican by at least one treaty. No other religion has such a power in Europe and in the World, thus prompting the Economist to publish an investigation about the diplomatic service of the Vatican, questioning whether it deserves its special status in the UN (21/07/2007)