What actually seems to have happened was that Dawkins was speaking with Hitchens. Hitchens suggested a legal challenge. Dawkins thought he might know someone who could help but couldn't remember how to contact them. Hitchens found another person to help. A journalist asked Dawkins about it and Dawkins responded that he supported the initiative.
Source
Therefore - OMG - DAWKINS IS GOING TO TOTALLY BREAK THROUGH SECURITY PERIMETERS AND HANDCUFFS THE P0PE!!11 LOLWTFPWND!
Just another example of left wing media bias.
quote:
Needless to say, I did NOT say "I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI" or anything so personally grandiloquent...
What I DID say to Marc Horne when he telephoned me out of the blue, and I repeat it here, is that I am whole-heartedly behind the initiative by Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens to mount a legal challenge to the Pope's proposed visit to Britain. Beyond that, I declined to comment to Marc Horne, other than to refer him to my 'Ratzinger is the Perfect Pope' article here: Page not found | Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
And the
lawyer's position?
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In the US, 11,750 allegations of child sex abuse have so far featured in actions settled by archdioceses — in Los Angeles for $660m and in Boston for $100m. But some dioceses have gone into bankruptcy and some claimants want higher level accountability — two reasons to sue the pope in person. In 2005 a test case in Texas failed because the Vatican sought and obtained the intercession of President Bush, who agreed to claim sovereign (ie head of state) immunity on the pope's behalf. Bush lawyer John B Bellinger III certified that Pope Benedict the XVI was immune from suit "as the head of a foreign state".
Bellinger is now notorious for his defence of Bush administration torture policies. His opinion on papal immunity is even more questionable. It hinges on the assumption that the Vatican, or its metaphysical emanation, the Holy See, is a state. But the papal states were extinguished by invasion in 1870 and the Vatican was created by fascist Italy in 1929 when Mussolini endowed this tiny enclave — 0.17 of a square mile containing 900 Catholic bureaucrats — with "sovereignty in the international field ... in conformity with its traditions and the exigencies of its mission in the world".
The notion that statehood can be created by another country's unilateral declaration is risible: Iran could make Qom a state overnight, or the UK could launch Canterbury on to the international stage. But it did not take long for Catholic countries to support the pretentions of the Holy See, sending ambassadors and receiving papal nuncios in return. Even the UK maintains an apostolic mission.
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