In honor of the Popes visit to the UK at the moment, I’m re-printing Christopher Hitchers insightful Slate article about him that was published last March.

Right now there appears to be a lot of PR spin going on … people appear to have forgotten who he really is and what he really represents, so I felt it appropriate to publish this as a brief reminder. This is not about “Catholic Hate”, but rather is about the fact that justice is being ignored. This individual who has done so much damage to so many lives appears to be above the law. Hideous crimes have been committed, and he has conspired to cover it all up and protect the abusers, yet because he is the leader of a powerful religious institution, many are choosing to forget. Hence the need for this little reminder

The Great Catholic Cover-Up

The pope’s entire career has the stench of evil about it.

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, March 15, 2010, at 10:20 AM ET

Pope Benedict XVI On March 10, the chief exorcist of the Vatican, the Rev. Gabriele Amorth (who has held this demanding post for 25 years), was quoted as saying that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican,” and that “when one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ in the holy rooms, it is all true—including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia.” This can perhaps be taken as confirmation that something horrible has indeed been going on in the holy precincts, though most inquiries show it to have a perfectly good material explanation.

Concerning the most recent revelations about the steady complicity of the Vatican in the ongoing—indeed endless—scandal of child rape, a few days later a spokesman for the Holy See made a concession in the guise of a denial. It was clear, said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, that an attempt was being made “to find elements to involve the Holy Father personally in issues of abuse.” He stupidly went on to say that “those efforts have failed.”

He was wrong twice. In the first place, nobody has had to strive to find such evidence: It has surfaced, as it was bound to do. In the second place, this extension of the awful scandal to the topmost level of the Roman Catholic Church is a process that has only just begun. Yet it became in a sense inevitable when the College of Cardinals elected, as the vicar of Christ on Earth, the man chiefly responsible for the original cover-up. (One of the sanctified voters in that “election” was Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, a man who had already found the jurisdiction of Massachusetts a bit too warm for his liking.)

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