Look: the Pope is a crank figure, the head of a weird religious cult who promotes weird ideas, such as that condoms promote the spread of AIDS or more lately, opposes legislation to promote equality. He’s a nasty old bigot from an insignificant municipality who gets far more attention than he deserves.
Now he’s going to be visiting the UK. That’s fine; anyone, even irrelevant old coots, ought to be able to vacation where they please. However, this is being treated as a state visit and the British government is plunking down £20 million for the dubious privilege of having a weird geezer in a dress pretend to be speaking for an imaginary man in the sky to a gullible public. The guy has plenty of money of his own — he should pay for his own damn junket. Or the Catholic churches in England that want his attention should be the ones to cough up.
Speak up against the papal boondoggle. The National Secular Society has a petition — get on it.