A leader:
who was not elected democratically, but by a group of unelected barons
who was elected for life with no need for re-election
of a country where :
there is no separation of church and state, where the state is the church
dies.
And most politicians of modern democracies eulogise him, because the idolizing of this leader is such that many citizens of these modern democracies will do whatever this foreign, undemocratically elected leader says, despite the fact that idolitary is forbidden for the followers of this leader.
Because people will naturally worship stars like the Pope and Britney Spears emotions may run wild when we criticise them, but exactly because the Pope was a leader, and particularly because he wasn’t democratically elected then his actions should not be above scrutiny or criticism .
The late pope was objectively damn good at what he did, but despite the images of a gentle old man towards the end of his life, he was a tough guy. In fighting communism, he was good, in reinforcing outdated catholic attitudes to the modern world he was bad.
Dawkins on when not to beleive:
“Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing in it because you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church, the pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just because he is the pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important people are the old men with beards called ayatollahs. Lots of Muslims in this country are prepared to commit murder, purely because the ayatollahs in a faraway country tell them to.
When I say that it was only in 1950 that Roman Catholics were finally told that they had to believe that Mary’s body shot off to Heaven, what I mean is that in 1950, the pope told people that they had to believe it. That was it. The pope said it was true, so it had to be true! Now, probably some of the things that that pope said in his life were true and some were not true. There is no good reason why, just because he was the pope, you should believe everything he said any more than you believe everything that other people say. The present pope ( 1995 ) has ordered his followers not to limit the number of babies they have. If people follow this authority as slavishly as he would wish, the results could be terrible famines, diseases, and wars, caused by overcrowding.”