UK: National Secular Society plans
protest for Pope's UK visit
The Pope is due to visit the UK this September
The National Secular Society has announced a " large-scale
campaign" to protest against Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Britain in
September.
NSS president Terry Sanderson said he was seeking to bring together gay
groups, feminist groups, family planning organisations, pro-choice groups and
victim support groups to join the campaign.
Similar demonstrations were held when Pope John Paul II visited Britain
in 1982.
Sanderson said: “The taxpayer in this country is going to be faced with
a bill of some £20 million for the visit of the Pope. A visit in which he has
already indicated, he will attack equal rights and promote discrimination.”
“We hope that the many people who are outraged at the Vatican’s apparent
indifference to the abuse of children by its priests will turn out to make
their feelings clear.”
"If the Catholic Church wishes its leader to come here, it should
pay for the visit itself. I am sure many others feel the same resentment as we
do at the NSS at funding the presence of someone who wishes to impose a
reactionary agenda of social change on us.”
Sanderson added: “We hope that the many people who are outraged at the
Vatican’s apparent indifference to the abuse of children by its priests will
turn out to make their feelings clear.”
The Protest the Pope Coalition will officially launch later this week
and the NSS is planning a festival of films which criticise Catholicism,
including the Magdalene Sisters and The Boys of St Vincent’s.
Pope Benedict XVI is due to visit Portugal in April, a month after the
country's new gay marriage law is expected to come into force. He has already criticised the change, calling gay marriage an
"attack" on the natural differences between men and women.
In an end-of year address in 2008, he said that the existence of gay
people threatens humanity as much as the destruction of the rainforests does
and that "blurring" genders through acceptance of transgender people
would kill off the human race. He has also attacked the use of condoms to
tackle HIV, saying they may make the problem worse.
The National Secular Society has set up a petition against the
state-funded visit, which can be found here: http://www.secularism.org.uk/petition-the-pm.html