When the Vatican goes to court
to protect the Pope's human rights...
Translated from
July 11, 2012
It is a new strategy but not completely. The Holy See has now decided to react blow for blow every time the Holy Father is the object of undue exploitation and violation of his personal right.
Thus on Tuesday afternoon, the Vatican obtained from a Hamburg court an injunction against further distribution of the current issue of a satirical German magazine called
Titanic which features the Pope on the front and back covers
[in what one can only call grossly offensive and maliciously vulgar photo-shopped images showing him 'soiling' his white robes front and back]. The injunction applies both to the paper issues of the magazine which were ordered withdrawn from the newsstands, and to the reproduction of the images online.
[Nonetheless, at least one site still has it online.]
The front cover shows the Pope with a huge yellow stain on the front of his cassock, with the title, 'Alleluia at the Vatican: The leak has been found"; and on the back, a photo of the Pope taken from behind, this time showing an icky brown stain on the cassock, with the heading "Another leak found!".
It was Deputy Secretary of State Angelo Becciu who asked a German lawyer to act in behalf of the Pope. I must say I found the justification made by the magazine editor laughable, who said the photo merely intended to show that the Pope, while celebrating the solution of Vatileaks
[What solution? It hasn't been solved yet!] spilled some Fanta on his cassock.
Yes, the Pope is known to favor orange juice as beverage
[but Fanta orange is an orange-colored drink, not yellow!]. But the placement of the stain - not to mention that of the messy brown stain in the back photo - are clearly not meant to suggest anything edible.
Reading that man's lame excuse reminded me of the words of Benetton officials who tried to minimize the photomontage they used in November 2011 showing the Pope and the Imam of Al-Azhar kissing each other on the mouth. And they had the effrontery to hang it as a giant poster on the bridge in front of Castel Sant'Angelo.
Benetton said at the time that it did not intend to provoke or offend believers. I think that in both cases the provocative intention was paramount, not to mention the absolute absence of taste.
I said that the Vatican's current strategy is new but not that new, because in the case of Benetton, the Secretariat of State immediately said that it would take legal action. And last May 17, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi announced that Benetton
[which had promptly withdrawn the offensive photo from its ad campaign - did they really think the Vatican would let that pass? I still don't know how the Imam of Al-Azhar reacted, but it should have been just as definitive!] had agreed "instead of financial compensation for the offense, to contribute an amount for the charities of the Pope".
This time, in the case of the German magazine, nothing was pre-announced but immediate legal action was taken - which I think is the best option. b It must be noted that these 'provocatory' acts had nothing to do with diplomatic privileges or acts of governance by the Holy See, but of a direct violation of the Pope's individual human rights, which can and must be addressed to ordinary courts whenever this is necessary, as the Vatican did with
Titanic.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/07/2012 14:37]