Barbara Blaine, President of 
WAF at the Protest the Pope! demo in London
Thousands of protestors
marched from Hyde Park
Corner to Downing Street
in protest at the state
visit
of the Pope.
Speakers at the Downing Street
rally included Clara
Connolly
from WAF and Pragna Patel from Southall
Black Sisters.
Julia Bard reports.
[photos: Helen Lowe and Judy Greenway]
On Saturday 18th September, thousands of people took to the streets of central London to protest against the Pope’s state visit to the UK to spread his misogynistic, homophobic message and weasel his way out of responsibility for generations of child abuse by the church.
Earlier in the day, the BBC reported the Pope’s crocodile tears over ‘the "unspeakable crimes" of child abuse within the Catholic Church’ but didn’t mention Ratzinger’s role in shuffling the perpetrators out of range of the media and criminal justice system – nor, incidentally, his disgraceful reinstatement of the Holocaust-denying bishop, Richard Williamson, or his breathtaking claim that atheism caused the crimes of the Nazis.
It’s shameful that the BBC dropped its coverage of the protest after Saturday to make room for Ratzinger's 'euphoria' at the success of his visit (who wouldn’t be euphoric at being entertained for four days at a cost of £12 million?).
The march was upbeat and inventive. Unlike the ubiquitous mass-produced placards on most demonstrations, this one was full of creativity, humour and real humanity. Paper mitres bearing slogans were the fashion statement of the event, and a sleek convertible containing ‘nuns’ and a ‘Pope’ with a megaphone provided an outrageously camp and entertaining commentary.
Women Against Fundamentalism were there with our fabulous new banner, created for us by women from Southall Black Sisters (thank you!), and Pragna Patel and Clara Connolly spoke brilliantly at the rally at the end in Whitehall. [Their speeches are published in full below.]
Clara Connolly
"Women against Fundamentalism protests the Pope’s state visit not because we are anti-Catholic but because we are anti-fundamentalist. Our founding moment 21 years ago was to defend Salman Rushdie against Muslim fundamentalism and the Ayatollah Khomeini – another very dangerous old man.
WAF fights for a secular state in Britain - not because we are anti-religious but because only a secular state can begin to guarantee genuine equality between people regardless of religion. Religious leaders should be as welcome as any other visitor subject to the law – but not given special privileges or state visits.
If responsible for serious human rights abuses (and anyone who doubts this of the Pope should read Geoffrey Robertson’s excellent book, The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuses) he should be subject to arrest under international law, like Pinochet.
WAF are supporters of the Protest the Pope! campaign because fundamentalist leaders abuse power – state power and power over their own religious communities – and this is always at the expense of women.
The Pope does not consider himself bound by any man-made law – national or international – he recognises only the law of God and what he calls the natural law. To revive Catholicism in the 21st century, he has rediscovered Thomas Aquinas, a 13th century Italian monk. The pope promotes – with a straight face – these medieval views on sex: to live and to procreate are counted by Aquinas among those basic (natural) human values on which all human values are based.
Aquinas was vehemently opposed to non-procreative sexual activity. This led him to view masturbation, oral sex, and even coitus interruptus, as being worse than incest and rape. He also objected to sexual positions other than the missionary position, on the assumption that they made conception more difficult.
If sex is for procreation only, it follows that contraception and abortion, as well as same-sex relationships, interfere with the natural order. There is no recognition of the social world and of human progress in this bleak world. He presents a criminally skewed view of how we should behave – for example, don’t wear condoms to protect against AIDS – he protects procreation at the expense of actual human lives.
This pope harms people – and especially he harms women, who carry the burden of procreation and care.
So how is the visit going?
It's as carefully managed as any state visit: say the visit of Bush two years ago. If ordinary Catholics want to attend any of the Papal events they have to be vetted by the parish – to gain entry to Hyde Park this evening you will need a pilgrim pass distributed by your pilgrim leader, and your passport or other ID. You can travel only as part of your pilgrim group, ie on your parish coach. Every single individual will be checked and searched by the police. To attend is a privilege you will have to pay for with a ticket costing up to £25, and by a lifetime of obedient worship.
Even the police were forbidden access to St Marys' College yesterday cos they didn’t have their pilgrim passes! (Evening Standard 15/9/10).
It's not North African street cleaners the Pope is afraid of; the security arrangements were put in place against his own flock. The splendid TV spectacle – the Mass, the singing – cannot be disrupted by a whisper of dissent. He has refused to meet the organisations of clerical abuse survivors who have asked to present him with a dossier of their stories; instead he has met 5 individuals in private in a carefully controlled act of penitence.
The culmination of his visit is tomorrow – the promotion of an English saint, a convert from the C of E – what a triumph!
But Pope, be careful whom you beatify! Cardinal Newman, with his doubts about papal infallibility, was once described by the Vatican as ‘the most dangerous man in England’. Of course he is now being mispresented by you as the scourge of dissenters. But he famously wrote:
'I shall drink first to conscience, and afterwards to the Pope’;
and today’s Catholics seem to be following his example. They are listening to their conscience and staying away. It was reported earlier this week that only a fifth of the pilgrims passes for Glasgow’s papal mass were taken up. The 2,500 tickets offered to Catholics from Ireland, who were expected to travel in planeloads, were not sold.
It is clear from the blanket TV coverage since his arrival that Catholic schoolchildren have been wheeled out last minute to fill the empty spaces. I recall the same thing when I was teaching in a Catholic girls' school in the early eighties – it was the schools which were targeted by the parish priest to bring the crowds out on the big anti-abortion marches.
This morning, the Pope received official visits from state leaders – even Harriet Harman, whose Equality Bill he attacked as against the natural order. Yesterday he was kissed by the Archbishop of Canterbury – despite the ordination of women priests, which he has described as a ‘grave crime’. The cravenness of state and religious leaders in this country to someone whose views are so repugnant and provocative beggars belief. Welcoming and tolerant is nice – but this is going too far!
So with all this help from the state, and blanket TV coverage from the media who love a spectacle, however empty, you can probably carry off this visit, Benedict, despite its hiccups, but I dare you to go to Ireland sometime soon. There your faithful flock are all raging!
I’ll finish by saying one good thing about the Pope – he has a genius for provocation, and his visit has helped to bring us all together – from the Gaydar Angels in Twickenham to the women demanding ordination outside Lambeth palace – and here on this platform the breadth of protest will hopefully give rise to a broad-based secular movement in Britain.
This is badly needed: the trend to promote and fund religious and charitable organisations at the expense of the public sector – already clear under Labour but set to intensify under Cameron’s Big Society – will have terrible consequences for all of us, but particularly for the poorest women in society. A secular campaign will be essential to save the public sector and the welfare state – something that we in Britain can really be proud of but which is now mortally threatened.
Clara Connolly
Pragna Patel
I stand here on behalf of Southall Black Sisters in solidarity with all those who have been horrifically sexually and physically abused by religious leaders of the Catholic Church headed by the reactionary, homophobic and misogynist Pope, Benedict XV1
Should we be surprised by the Pope’s abject failure to carry out robust and transparent investigations into the staggering incidence of clerical sexual abuse across the Catholic world? Should we be surprised at policies which seek to condemn women to death and deny them their fundamental right to freedom from Aids, from poverty and from ignorance? By the denial of the right to sexual autonomy? By the Pope’s rehabilitation of a Nazi Holocaust denier? By the racism that emanates from the Vatican which regards Islam as ‘evil’ and the secular and plural fabric of public life in the UK as something akin to a Third World country?
The answer is No. None of this comes as any surprise because the Pope represents a particularly abhorrent and resurgent form of religiosity that is characterised by intolerance, dogma and inhumanity.
Nor am I surprised to learn that the Muslim Council of Britain will be taking part in the papal visit. Contrary to the view that religious movements work against each other, they actually collude with each other on key issues such as homosexuality and the control of women’s reproductive rights, as women and gay people around the world are only too aware. The MCB has blood on its hands too. It shelters its own war criminals – those responsible for the murder and rape of thousands of Bangladeshi civilians during the Bangladesh War of independence in 1971. It also remains silent on the sexual and physical abuse of children in madrassas as pointed out by the Muslim Parliament of GB in a courageous report in 2006. In the bid for absolute power and control, Hindu and Sikh fundamentalists have also developed their own rabidly authoritarian, anti-human rights dogmas and are also in the business of prohibiting divorce and abortion and fomenting hatred of other religious minorities which can spill into mass murder, rape and genocide.
The vulnerable women and children on whose behalf SBS advocates, who come from all minority religious and ethnic backgrounds, are also not surprised by the illiberal values of the Pope. They have their own illiberal religious leaderships to contend with. On a daily basis they have their hopes and aspirations quashed by religious leaders who legitimise their oppression and abuse in the name of upholding ‘authentic’ family and religious values. On a daily basis they feel the impact of reactionary religious authority on their right to life, on their right to live free from torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, on their right to equal treatment, on their right to choice in marriage, on their right to a private life, on their right to freedom of expression, on their right to education and on their right to a fair trial.
They regard their religious institutions as political entities, unrepresentative and undemocratic. They demand the separation of religion from political power. They demand secular spaces like that of SBS so that as believers and non-believers from all backgrounds they can co-exist and thrive side by side with dignity and freedom.
As one woman so eloquently put it:
The main principle is to live by humanity. That they should not look at colour. The Poet Iqbal – our greatest poet said.’ Black or white, chota (small), bada (big) , budha (old) and jawan (young) obey Allah. If there is no difference for Allah, why do we bring about difference? I like his (Iqbal’s) idea of unity for all humans.” (Shah)
SBS stands in solidarity with all the men, women and children who have suffered at the hands of religious fundamentalism and authoritarianism. We say to the Pope go back to your despotic home in the Vatican. You have nothing useful to contribute to the progress of humanity. The money that the State has spent on you would have been better spent on shelters and services for abused women and children which are closing or under threat of closure. And to all religious leaders who choose intolerance, intimidation and fear above humanity and compassion, we say: You do not speak in our name. Fear is your weapon but courage is ours.