Women Against Fundamentalism wholeheartedly opposes Gordon Brown's invitation to Pope Benedict XVI for a state visit to the UK in September 2010. This man should not be afforded state legitimacy, let alone state funding, for this particularly narrow missionary venture. WAF says: The Pope is not welcome here and especially not on our taxes or with the state's official support! We subscribe to the 'Protest the Pope Coalition' call for all progressive forces in the UK to unite and campaign against this visit.
WAF opposes the Pope's state visit and particularly the use of state funding to facilitate the visit of any such right wing religious leader. The estimated cost to the state will be something in the region of £20 million. This expense is scandalous, more so in an age of recession, and within a political context where essential public services – an ailing National Health Service, a rescinding public housing sector, an education system fending off billions of pounds worth of cuts – are severely compromised. This invitation is yet another example of a government-led faith agenda using up public resources in order to appease and legitimise right wing religious lobbies that are actively mobilising to compromise equalities and undermine hard fought for rights.
Pope Benedict holds some pretty ridiculous, nay abhorrent, views. He is renowned for claiming that the appropriate remedy for HIV/AIDS is chastity, not condoms, and he has already been associated with a stream of homophobic comments claiming that homosexuality is an ‘objective disorder’ and that gay marriage represents an ‘attack’ on the natural differences between men and women. Indeed, this is a Pope who has been actively creating a more conservative front in Catholicism, evidenced by his recent de-excommunication and rehabilitation of Bishop Williamson, a notorious Holocaust denier and one of five bishops in the ultra-right Society of Pius X (linked with Le Pen in France). In the last few days alone, the Pope's searingly honest rebuttal of the Equality Bill is a highly intolerant claim for the ‘freedom of religious conviction’, an overt call to quell dissent within the Catholic Church and revert to a very restricted interpretation of the Gospel. This narrow interpretation is widely contested by other sections within his own church, such as LGBT Christians, who are being denied full participation and their right to express freedom of religious conviction altogether, thanks to his interventions. Moreover, on this question of being accountable to all his congregation, the Pope's recent expressions of shock in response to the findings of the Murphy Report into child sexual abuse within the Irish Catholic Church can not camouflage the overall way that he has handled this issue – he refused to allow the Vatican to be involved in the inquiry and his subsequent statements have not called for action against the offenders or sought to apologise for the Church hierarchy's collusion in the perpetuation of abuse.
Women Against Fundamentalism is a member of the Protest the Pope Coalition
The National Secular Society will be running a petition opposing the state funding of the Pope's visit. Visit the NSS website. The petition will be online from February 22 2010.