Tag: Gordon Brown

Ignore the bells and the smells and the lovely Raphaels, the Pope’s visit to Britain is nothing to celebrate

Gordon Brown is ‘delighted’, David Cameron is ‘delighted’. I am ‘repelled’.

In his actions on child abuse and Aids, Joseph Ratzinger has colluded in the protection of paedophiles and the deaths of millions of Africans. As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Pope John Paul II’s chief enforcer), it was Ratzinger’s job to investigate the child abuse scandal that plagued the Catholic church for decades. And how did he do it? In May 2001 he wrote a confidential letter to Catholic bishops, ordering them not to notify the police – or anyone else – about the allegations, on pain of excommunication. He referred to a previous (confidential) Vatican document that ordered that investigations should be handled “in the most secretive way . . . restrained by a perpetual silence”. Excommunication is a joke to me, perhaps to you, but to a Catholic it means exclusion and perhaps hellfire – for trying to protect a child. Well, God is love.

Pope Benedict XVI will come to Britain next year, making the first state visit by a pontiff. He is expected to meet the Queen, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and may stay at Buckingham Palace.

The love of money has caused politicians to “fall from grace”, according to the head of the Roman Catholic church in Scotland.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien also warned that society has become “amoral” because those in power refuse to tell the public how to behave.