He / She/ It / They are so difficult to apprehend, and can you ever tell whether they really are sitting in the dock? Naturally He / She / It / They are default invokers of the right to silence...and never make a plea on their own behalf. Popes are quite a different matter altogether....they have the obvious benefit to litigants of having corporeal existence, which makes litigation against Pontiffs, somewhat easier for plaintiffs. A group of litigants is taking Pope Benedict to court...the International Criminal Court at the Hague over the Pope's culpability for: Pope 'may be sued' over abuse by clergy The Vatican has strutted the international stage for many decades as if it were a sovreign state....hopefully the case may finally put that particular fiction to rest. For an eloquent dissertation on the topic, I can thoroughly recommend Geoffrey Robertson's "The Case of the Pope". The Case of the Pope by Geoffrey Robertson | Penguin Books Australia An indicative feel for what is in Robertson's book can be found in Robertson's article published in the UK journal, The Guardian,the link to which is below. Put the pope in the dock | Geoffrey Robertson | Comment is free | The Guardian I wish the plaintiffs well, but the Pope has the undoubted advantage of claiming that God's on his side. : O
f'in A. Finally! My personal opinion is that it'd be nice just to hear guilty. You can't put the pope in jail for crimes his predecessors committed, but to hear that officially, they did cover it up, and aid in the rape of all those children would mean more justice than these people have received.
