Government dismisses calls to arrest Pope
Isabel de Bertodano
Government and other legal experts have dismissed moves to arrest Pope Benedict XVI when he visits Britain later this year.
Atheist campaigners Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have said they will seek to have the Pope charged with human-rights offences over his alleged cover-up of child abuse cases. But the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has said the Pope has immunity against prosecution.
"The UK has full diplomatic relations with the Holy See and the Pope is recognised as its head of state. He therefore has sovereign immunity," a spokesman said.
Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC has been asked to draw up a case against Benedict XVI, using the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998. Pinochet was no longer president of Chile so he was not entitled to diplomatic immunity. Mr Robertson claims that the Pope's right to diplomatic immunity could also be challenged because "the anomalous claim of the Vatican to be a state" could be "challenged successfully in the UK and in the European Court of Human Rights".
However, Sir Ivor Roberts, an expert in international law and a former British ambassador to Italy, said Mr Robertson had confused the Holy See and the Vatican City State, which are distinct entities.
"Nearly 200 states have diplomatic relations with the Holy See and it's treated as a subject of international law, which confounds the Robertson argument," he told The Tablet.
The website of the UK's embassy to the Holy See confirms this, saying the Vatican City and the Holy See are "two sovereign entities" and it is as head of the Holy See, which "as legal person bears many similarities with the crown in Christian monarchies", that the Pope is diplomatically recognised.
Formal resident diplomatic relations between Britain and the Holy See were established in 1914, well before the Vatican City State came into existence in 1929 as a result of the Lateran Treaty between it and the then Kingdom of Italy. It is the Holy See, rather than the Vatican City State, that has the status of an observer state at the United Nations.
A senior diplomatic source told The Tablet: "If Geoffrey Robertson's notion of diplomacy is anything to go by this does not have sense let alone legal judgement behind it."
Fr Federico Lombardi, the spokesman for the Holy See, said this week he found the proposed move against the Pope "bizarre" and that "it would be very strange if during a state visit the person who is invited to make a state visit is arrested".
Writing in The Guardian earlier this month, Mr Robertson also claimed that even if the Pope did qualify for diplomatic immunity, he would still be subject to prosecution in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. "If acts of sexual abuse by priests are not isolated or sporadic, but part of a wide practice both known to and unpunished by their de facto authority then they fall within the temporal jurisdiction of the ICC," he wrote.
Sir Ivor dismissed this as "fatuous" and Neil Addison, a barrister and director of the Thomas More Legal Centre, said that allegations that the Pope covered-up sex abuse cases "don't come anywhere close to a crime against humanity".
However, Mr Addison added that the Holy See and those organising the papal visit in September had cause to be worried that an attempt at a citizen's arrest could create havoc. "If a lunge is made at the Pope, police officers and security guards would have to make a split-second decision and it could end in tragedy," he said.
It is understood that security for the Pope's trip is being reviewed because of concern about protests by secularists and abuse victims.
There are worries that the entire visit will be overshadowed by the abuse furore.
"It will do if one permits it," the Bishop of Lancaster, Michael Campbell, told BBC Radio Cumbria on Tuesday. "One has to be totally honest, there's no point burying our heads in the sand or brushing anything under the carpet: there is sinfulness, there's evil around in the Church and one has to acknowledge that and address it in the best way one can."
Mr Dawkins said this week: "Even if the Pope doesn't end up in the dock, and even if the Vatican doesn't cancel the visit, I am optimistic that we shall raise public consciousness to the point where the British Government will find it very awkward indeed to go ahead with the Pope's visit."
It is understood that the possibility of the Pope meeting with victims of abuse in Britain is being considered. Responsibility for recommending such a meeting would rest with the Archbishop of Westminster and the bishops' conference. It is believed that foremost among the bishops' concerns would be whether the Pope could meet victims away from the media spotlight. This week, bishops' conference officials were in Rome for meetings with Vatican officials about the visit.
April 19, 2010