Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, are seeking advice from human rights lawyers as to what legal action can be taken against the pope over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.
It emerged this weekend that in 1985 when he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases, the pope signed a letter arguing that the “good of the universal church” should be considered against the defrocking of an American priest who committed sex offences against two boys.
Dawkin and Hitchens believe he should face criminal proceedings because his "first instinct" was to protect the church rather than the children in its care.
They are hoping to exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, on a Spanish warrant when he visited Britain in 1998.