The Government has moved to prevent the possibility of an arrest warrant being issued against the Pope during his state visit to the UK this autumn.

Sky News reported that Whitehall officials have been “seriously concerned” that campaigners would use international criminal rules to try to detain the Pontiff while he is in the UK.

Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC were among those reported to be looking at the options for bringing a private prosecution in relation to the Pope’s alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Church.

Now Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has proposed changes to the rules on universal jurisdiction, a law that allows individuals to be prosecuted in the UK for serious offences even if they were committed abroad.

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Clarke is behaving unethically. There is serious evidence here suggesting the Pope is guilty of some horrendous crimes. These crimes include hiding pedophiles, which directly resulted in hundreds or thousands of rapes across several countries. The Pope, if guilty, would clearly be classified as an horrible International criminal, and deserve a long prison term.

Clarke doesn’t care! He is pulling out all the stops so a known criminal can go unpunished.

In this week’s edition of the Voice Of Reason, we focus on the Muslim center being built at Ground Zero.

I don’t think we can ethically stop the Muslims from building anything where it is legal to do so for any other mythology. If we would let the Christians or Jews build there, we have to let the Muslims. While I am somewhat convinced that this is being planned to incite and inflame, we as a society have to rise above that, and let them build. Then we can constantly remind them that there is a world available to them that is free of the barbarism and violence that permeates their mythology.