So, the Pope is dead. Long live the Pope. Better still, we are told, canonise him - make him a saint so his name will live for ever.
His funeral was an impressive affair, attended by the highest dignitaries and crowned heads from around the world, watched by millions on TV and fêted across the pages of all our newspapers.
But wasn't this the same man who forbade raped women in Kosovo to use the "morning after pill"? Who thus condemned them to bearing the children of an alien faith and caused many of them, their country not being famous for its religious and social tolerance, to be outcast from their communities through no fault of their own? The same man about whom the International Planned Parenthood Federation said they were appalled by such an 'apparent indifference to human suffering', while the United Nations Population Fund was shocked by such 'insensitivity'? The man accused by Marie Stopes International of being out of touch with refugees?
The Pope in his wisdom claimed that emergency contraception using the morning after pill was 'a real abortion technique'. 'Every post-coital contraception is by definition abortive,' said his spokesman, the vice-president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and a Vatican spokeswoman said 'use of the day-after pill is not permitted by Catholic morality because it is abortive. A murder does not become less grave because of the circumstances in which it takes place.'
In fact these are lies. The morning-after pill, which must be taken within 72 hours of intercourse, only works before implantation. It works by either preventing the release of an egg from the ovaries, blocking sperm from fertilizing an egg, or preventing implantation. Thus it does not abort a foetus that has already begun its journey towards life. But I suppose we shouldn't expect a saint to bother himself with mundane things like scientific facts.
No one knows how many Kosovan Albanian women were raped during the war. Many, understandably, would not talk about it because they knew they would be shunned by their families and friends. A spokeswoman for Marie Stopes International said women in the camps were suicidal at the prospect of bearing their Serb rapists' babies and would opt for this rather than giving birth. So they are hardly likely to understand Pope John Paul's advice "to turn their rape into an act of love by "accepting" the enemy into them and making him "flesh of their own flesh" by carrying their pregnancies to term".
And there is worse. This putative "saint" ordered African Catholics not to use condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS. Africa is home to nearly two-thirds of all the estimated 40 million people living with HIV or AIDS in the world. The disease has reduced life expectancy below 40 years in Botswana, the Central African Republic, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. There are 100 million Catholics in Africa, and The New Statesman claimed that the Pope did more to spread AIDS than 'prostitution and the trucking industry combined'.
The New Statesman carried a picture of the Pope on its cover, with the slogan 'Blood of innocents on his hands: Pope John Paul II helped keep the continent of Africa disease-ridden….' Writer Polly Toynbee described the Pope as 'a man whose edict killed millions', and human rights activist Peter Tatchell said 'Millions of people in developing countries are orphans, having lost their parents to AIDS because of the Pope's anti-condom dogma.' And we are supposed to think this man could be a saint?
Luckily we are told that many Catholics in Africa simply disobey the Pope's orders and carry on using condoms, so the holy man's edicts may not be having quite the malign affect once feared. But the fact that some people don't obey bad orders doesn't excuse those who issued the orders. In the Second World War there were no doubt many German soldiers who behaved honourably and humanely, but that didn't make the Nazis right.
I imagine there are many people who would sympathise with the Catholic view that if women don't want children (or AIDS) they should simply not have sex until they're married. That doesn't help women who are raped, of course. And does AIDS only affect unmarried people? Of course it doesn't - and there are plenty of other ways to catch it apart from sex. So even a good little, pure little African virgin bride can still be at risk. What is she to do? Refrain from having sex with her husband?
But no. That won't do either. The church says that marriage is ordained for the procreation of children. Therefore it is a woman's duty to have children with her husband. After all, God designed us for this purpose - young women are flooded with hormones that make them want to have sex and make babies (young men's hormones are a little different - they just want to have sex). So anything our little African virgin bride does to thwart God's intention must be just as heinous a sin as abortion. Having a headache is a sin. The rhythm method must be a sin. Withdrawal is a sin. Just keeping her legs together is a sin.
Must be tough being a Catholic woman. You must accept rape as an act of love, you have to drop babies at every opportunity, and you can't get to be the next Pope. You just can't win, really.
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