The Ashes of Repentance

1215: The Inquisition
A pope with the inappropriate name of Innocent III orders the suppression of "false doctrine" by instituting a gestapo-like elite to persecute heretics and blasphemers.
According to some sources, up to ten million Europeans died in the wake of this divine institution.

1252: Torture
Another "Innocent" introduces torture as a legitimate means of extracting confessions.

1481: Autodafé
Autodafé in Spain reaches its summit. Following these summary death sentences masses of heretics are burned together. The last heretic is hanged in Spain almost 400 years later.

1491: The Conquest of Paradise During the colonisation of Central and South America and with the blessing of the church, conquistadores Cortes and Pizarro murder millions of Indians while stealing their gold.

1571: The Index
Accompanied by the usual threats, the Vatican publishes the "Index", a list of books that may not be read. Although the Index was abolished in 1961, critics and sceptics among the catholic clergy are still silenced by denying them freedom of speech or by excommunication.

1572: The Night of Saint Bartholomew
The marriage of a protestant blue blood and his catholic bride leads to the mass murder of French Huguenots (My ancestors were Huguenots, fleeing to protestant Switzerland).

1600: Religious Lies against Scientific Truth
Scientist Giordano Bruno is burned in Rome. In 1633 Galileo Galilei is arrested by the Vatican for proving that the Earth is not the centre of the Universe.
In 1992 the catholic church ridicules itself by belatedly rehabilitating Galilei. Numerous scientific findings have since laid bare false Christian doctrines, however, the church remains two centuries behind reality.

17th Century - 1782: Witches
The Catholic Church initiates the hunt for "witches", a particularly evil form of persecuting women. Hundreds of thousands, some of them pioneers in herbal medicine, fall victim to this religious hysteria by being burned on the stake.

Today
Despite the alleged infallibility, the pope had better ask himself:
"Is it possible that we are subject to new errors today?"
"Could it be that the orthodox directives we advocate now, may be unveiled as crimes of the church at a later date?"

The catastrophic human overpopulation is slowly being recognised the world over as the primary cause of our current problems. Two stubborn idiosyncrasies of the pope are fuelling a monstrous crime committed today. A guilt that a future pope (if we make it to that future) will find hard to do away this with a "mea culpa".

The suppression of women is one indirect reason, why there is poverty, armed conflict, abuse of children, particularly in the catholic countries of South America.
The Vatican's constant opposition towards family planning is the primary engine running down our planet's life clock at an increasing rate.

Why has religion, especially Catholicism been so successful in a world that is hundreds of years ahead of clerical dogma?
Two reasons come to mind:

1) Promise and threat
If only you adhere to what the church declares to be right, you will have a second life in perfect bliss after death.
With this doctrine, the church alleges to answer one of mankind's foremost questions: What comes after?
If you do not conform, the result is punishment in the worst imaginable form.

2) Liturgy
The pomp, the consolation and the glamour of religious services appeals to humans of a great many societies.
There is no replacement for these apparent needs at present. The sciences of astronomy, physics and biology, which would offer suitable alternatives, are beyond the reach of the masses, at least partially thanks to the ivory tower attitude of their proponents.

Certainly, world religions have brought more suffering to this planet than contributions to the most urgent questions or needs of mankind.
Many of today's conflicts are initiated by religious fanaticism. Therefore these conflicts are based on an outdated and erroneous interpretation of physical reality.

An institution that has caused, or at least sanctioned the painful death of so many millions, has lost its credibility forever.
An institution that is preparing the ground for yet more millions to die, by forcing population growth must be stopped by the world's communities.
There is no way the church can continue on its present mislead path, simply by having 30 ghost writers preparing a statement like "mea culpa" for their boss.
The culpa is just too monstrous.