Petition closed three months early
Government reply ignores petition concerns
London – 16 July 2010
Prime Minister David Cameron has unilaterally shut down all 10 Downing Street petitions, including one critical of the Pope, more than three months before it was due to close.
“This closure will prevent the petition from gaining a large number of signatures in the run-up to Pope Benedict’s visit to the UK in September,” said human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who drafted and posted the petition to the Prime Minister, which was hosted on the 10 Downing Street website.
View the petition here:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ProtestthePope/
“The Prime Minister’s office originally agreed that the petition would remain open until the Pope arrived in the UK. But his officials declared it closed on 6 June and only informed me of this decision yesterday. The petition had been frozen since early April, on the grounds that the general election was imminent. It was never reopened. During the short time it was online the petition gathered 12,339 signatures,” added Mr Tatchell.
This week the Prime Minister’s office posted a belated response to the petition. See here:
http://www.hmg.gov.uk/epetition-responses/petition-view.aspx?epref=ProtestthePope
“David Cameron’s response to the petition evades all the issues it raised, apart from the public funding of the Pope’s visit. Even then, the answer is vague and unsatisfactory. Much of the Pope’s UK itinerary involves religious events and proselytising. These should not be funded by the taxpayer.
“The petition asked the Prime Minister to disassociate the government from the Pope’s extreme, intolerant opposition to women’s rights, gay equality, embryonic stem cell research and condom use to prevent the spread of HIV. It also called on the Prime Minister to express his disagreement with the Pope’s role in the cover-up of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy, his rehabilitation of the Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson, and his plan to make a saint of Hitler’s Pope, Pius XII, who refused to publicly condemn the Holocaust. None of these issues were addressed by the government’s response.
“It is appalling that the government is not willing to disassociate itself from the Pope’s extremist, fundamentalist opinions. Even many Catholics criticise him as intolerant and out of touch,” said Mr Tatchell.
The Protest the Pope coalition is organising a march and rally against the Pope on Saturday 18 September in London. Details to be announced soon:
http://www.protest-the-pope.org.uk/
See below a dossier on the Pope’s anti-humanitarian policies:
Copy of the petition:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to disassociate the British government from the Pope’s intolerant views ahead of the Papal visit to Britain in September 2010. We urge the Prime Minister to make it clear that his government disagrees with the Pope’s opposition to women’s reproductive rights, gay equality, embryonic stem cell research and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV. We ask the Prime Minister to express his disagreement with the Pope’s role in the cover-up of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy, his rehabilitation of the Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson, and his decree paving the way for the beatification and sainthood of the war-time Pope, Pius XII, who stands accused of failing to speak out against the Holocaust. We also request the Prime Minister to assure us that the Pope’s visit will not be financed by the British taxpayer.”
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ProtestthePope/
Copy of the government response:
“Pope Benedict XVI will visit the UK from 16 to 19 September at the invitation of Her Majesty The Queen. The visit is described as a Papal Visit with the status of a State Visit. The programme will include a number of pastoral events, which are the responsibility of the Catholic Church, as well as some significant official events, which will provide opportunities for issues of common interest to the UK Government and the Holy See to be discussed at the highest level.
“The Holy See has a global reach and so is a valuable international partner for the UK Government. Our relationship with the Holy See enables us to address jointly a range of foreign policy and development issues. These include working towards delivery of the Millennium Development Goals, addressing the impacts of climate change, preventing and resolving conflict, and finding ways to encourage disarmament.
“As with any bilateral diplomatic relationship, there are issues on which we disagree. The Holy See is clear on our positions on these issues. However, we believe that Pope Benedict’s visit will provide an opportunity to strengthen and build on our relationship with the Holy See in areas where we share interests and goals, and to discuss those issues on which our positions differ.
“Since the visit has the status of a State Visit, and some parts of the programme are being organised by the British Government, a proportion of the costs of the Visit will fall to the Government. The costs can be divided into two categories: policing costs, which will be met by the State from existing policing budgets, and non-policing costs, which will be split between the Catholic Church and the Government. The total size of the costs at this stage is not confirmed but discussions are currently under way to decide the appropriate levels of contribution from the Government and the Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of England and Wales, and of Scotland. Other parts of the programme, such as the Masses and other pastoral events, are the responsibility of the Catholic Bishops’ Conferences. The direct costs of these events will therefore be borne by the Catholic Church.”
http://www.hmg.gov.uk/epetition-responses/petition-view.aspx?epref=ProtestthePope
Dossier on the Pope’s anti-humanitarian policies:
Peter Tatchell has criticised Pope Benedict XVI’s “illiberal” and “often extreme” stance on key social issues:
“The Pope is an opponent of women’s rights. He not only opposes the right of women to choose to have an abortion but also their right to contraception, which can help reduce the abortion rate,” said Mr Tatchell.
“He opposes women’s access to IVF fertility treatment, to give childless couples the chance of parenthood.
“The Pope supports gender discrimination, including a ban on women priests and bishops, and he wants the Catholic Church to be exempt from equality and anti-discrimination laws that apply to everyone else.
“He has sought to block potentially life-saving and disease-curing embryonic stem cell research, and he rejects the right of suffering, terminally ill people to die with dignity at a moment of the their own free choice.
“Pope Benedict denounces the use of condoms, even to stop the spread of HIV, and he has falsely claimed that condom usage “increases” the rate of HIV infection. His teachings put millions of lives at risk.
See The Independent, 27 March 2009:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/lancet-says-pope-distorting-condom-facts-1655647.html
“He has acquiesced with the Vatican’s lie that condoms spread HIV and that the virus can pass through the latex (sic). This outrageous falsehood has been condemned as untrue and irresponsible by the World Health Organisation and Christian Aid.
See the BBC website, 9 October 2003:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3176982.stm
“He rejects legal equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and their full protection in law against homophobic and transphobic discrimination
“The Pope has approved the Catholic Catechism, which condemns same-sex relationships as a “grave depravity,” “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to natural law.”
See The Vatican website, Catechism 2357:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm
“In 1992, he authored a Vatican document that condemned homosexuality as an “objective disorder” and a “strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil.” Rejecting the concept of gay human rights, the document asserted that there is no “right” to laws protecting homosexual people against discrimination, suggesting that the civil liberties of lesbians and gay men can be “legitimately limited for objectively disordered external conduct.”
See in full the Vatican document – Some Considerations Concerning the Catholic Response to Legislative Proposals on the Non-Discrimination of Homosexual Persons:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Some+considerations+concerning+the+Catholic+response+to+legislative…-a0128671084
“The Pope has attacked same-sex marriages as “evil” and vilified supporters of gay equality as “gravely immoral.” He has also vilified homosexual equality as a “deviant trend” and condemned same-sex love as being “without any social value.”
“Pope Benedict colludes with anti-semitism, including with holocaust deniers and with Catholic leaders who were complicit with the Nazi regime.
“He rescinded the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson who, in 2008, denied key elements of the Holocaust with claims that a maximum of 300,000 Jews died in concentration camps and that none were gassed by the Nazis.
See the BBC website, 4 February 2009:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7869565.stm
“He has also paved the way for the beatification and eventual sainthood of Pope Pius XII by issuing a decree in 2009 celebrating his virtues, despite the war-time pontiff’s 1933 Concordat with Adolf Hitler and his silence concerning the Nazi mass murder of six million Jews.
See The Guardian, 22 December 2009:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/21/pope-benedict-moves-pius-closer-sainthood
http://www.concordatwatch.eu/showkb.php?org_id=858&kb_header_id=752&order=kb_rank+ASC&kb_id=1212
“While condemning loving, consenting adult same-sex relations, the Pope helped shield from prosecution Catholic clergy guilty of child sex abuse. He colluded with the cover up of their crimes and with the policy of relocating paedophile priests to other parishes, where they often went on to commit further sexual abuse, as revealed in the 2006 BBC Panorama programme, Sex crimes and the Vatican.
See the Evening Standard, 30 September 2006
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23369148-pope-led-cover-up-of-child-abuse-by-priests.do
and see BBC Panorama 1 October 2006:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/5402928.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/5389684.stm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06qhnIwEdHE&feature=related
“Pope Benedict is complicit with human rights abuses and should not be accorded the honour of a State Visit to Britain,” said Mr Tatchell.