TWO GERMAN lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI
at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity.
Christian
Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel, based at Marktheidenfeld in the Pope’s
home state of Bavaria, last week submitted a 16,500-word document to the
prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, Dr Luis
Moreno Ocampo.
Their charges concern “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”.
They claim the Pope “is responsible for the preservation
and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion which
subjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats”.
They
allege he is also responsible for “the adherence to a fatal forbiddance
of the use of condoms, even when the danger of HIV-Aids infection
exists” and for “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”.
They
claim the Catholic Church “acquires its members through a compulsory
act, namely, through the baptism of infants that do not yet have a will
of their own”.
This act was “irrevocable” and is buttressed by threats
of excommunication and the fires of hell.
It was “a grave
impairment of the personal freedom of development and of a person’s
emotional and mental integrity”.
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.
Catholics “threatened by HIV-AIDS . . . are
faced with a terrible alternative: If they protect themselves with
condoms during sexual intercourse, they become grave sinners; if they do
not protect themselves out of fear of the punishment of sin threatened
by the church, they become candidates for death.”
There was also
“strong suspicion that Dr Joseph Ratzinger, as prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of his church and as Pope,
has up to the present day systematically covered up the sexual abuse of
children and youths and protected the perpetrators, thereby aiding and
abetting further sexual violence toward young people”.