The leaking pope is citing protection of his privacy,

Again: Claims of privacy protection can have no merit whatever when directed against satire of a public figure.

Further, the fact that this particular picture, and only this, was pulled, despite many similarly baseless challenges to the magazine, supports the contention that the Papacy gets special treatment. De facto if not de jure.

Compare the photos of Merkel's naked arse, which were printed in Britain, but not in Germany.)

But those are not comparable, because those photos involve Merkel's actual ass, not a satirical photoshop of Merkel mooning somebody.

The cock-cross was blasphemy. We are in agreement there: scrap all blasphemy laws.

What is the objective difference between Pussy Riot's video? (The video itself, leaving aside what they did in church, because that's not the point - the video would have been equally offensive if they had used stock footage and claimed to have filmed it in church, and lying about where you shot a picture is not in and of itself a crime.)

Cooking Christ: Possibly. I expect Mig will enlighten us what law that was. So possibly you can cite one single case in all of Europe, namely in Spain, which has not yet gotten rid of all ghosts of Franquism, and is perhaps not THAT representative for all Europe. And even that ended in an acquittal.

That it ended in acquittal does not matter. It was not summarily dismissed, the defendant was not awarded damages for the cost, wasted time and distress incurred, nor were the vexatious litigants slapped down hard enough to provide a reasonable deterrent against future frivolous lawsuits.

Considering that the Catholic Church is a transnational corporation with an annual profit comparable to the GDP of a small country, that outcome is not reassuring at all: The church can afford to sponsor such a lawsuit every day until the heat death of the universe and not even make a dent in their propaganda budget.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.