Vatican shields war criminal

One of the most wanted war criminals is being shielded by the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican hierarchy, according to Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the UN international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Del Ponte’s comments were reported in an article in The Telegraph yesterday.

Gen Ante Gotovina, charged in 2001 with crimes against humanity, is apparently hiding in a Franciscan monastery in his native Croatia. According to Del Ponte, the Vatican could probably pinpoint which of the more than 80 monasteries in the country he is hiding in, but requests for them to do so – including a direct appeal to the Pope – have been met with “a wall of silence”.

Gay campaigners, of course, are not surprised by this. The Vatican has chosen to persecute gays while protecting paedophile priests for decades, so it is not big surprise to us that they would protect a genocidal maniac.

But this is interesting:

Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the Vatican’s so-called “foreign minister” refused to help, telling her the Vatican was not a state and thus had "no international obligations" to help the UN to hunt war criminals!

What ho? The Vatican is not a state? Well they can’t have their fishes and loaves and eat them too. They have rights and privileges at the UN based on their tenuous claim to statehood, but when they’re called to act responsibly based on that status, they declare that they have no international obligations to help the UN?

Kick the buggers out! Let’s use their own weasel-words to unseat their holy arses from the UN. Perhaps next time they won’t be in such a strong position to block our human rights.