John Cardinal O'Connor, and Archbishop Renato Martino, UN Observer for the Vatican, greet Secretary General Kofi Annan and his wife Nane Annan in front of Holy Family Church on W. 47th Street.
Posted on 12/16/2003 5:54:51 AM PST by sitetest
Edited on 12/16/2003 7:13:44 AM PST by Lead Moderator. [history]
[LM's note: This thread is degenerating a bit into Catholic bashing and general flaming, and is in risk of being moved to the smokey backroom. Please stop. I've locked it once, and it has continued. Any more and it is gone. Thanks.]
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A top Vatican (news - web sites) official said Tuesday he felt pity and compassion for Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and criticized the U.S. military for showing video footage of him being treated "like a cow."
Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace department and a former papal envoy to the United Nations (news - web sites), told a news conference it would be "illusory" to think the arrest of the former Iraqi president would heal all the damage caused by a war which the Holy See opposed.
"I felt pity to see this man destroyed, (the military) looking at his teeth as if he were a cow. They could have spared us these pictures," he said.
"Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him," he said in answer to questions about Saddam's arrest.
Martino was referring to the videotape released by the U.S. military which showed a grubby, bearded and disheveled Saddam receiving a medical examination by a military doctor after his capture in an underground hole Saturday.
Martino was one of the Vatican officials most strongly opposed to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq (news - web sites).
"It's true that we should be happy that this (arrest) has come about because it is the watershed that was necessary... we hope that this will not have worse and other serious consequences," Martino said.
"But it is not the total solution to the problems of the Middle East," he said.
Martino said the Vatican hoped the arrest of Saddam "can contribute to promoting peace and the democratization of Iraq."
He added: "But is seems to me to be illusory to hope that this will repair the dramas and the damage of the defeat for humanity that a war always brings about."
The Vatican did not consider the war in Iraq "a just war" because it was not backed by the United Nations and because the Vatican believed more negotiations were necessary to avoid it.
Martino said the Vatican wanted an "appropriate institution" to put Saddam on trial but he did not elaborate.
U.S. forces were keeping the ousted 66-year-old dictator at a secret location for interrogation before he is put on trial in the months ahead. He could face the death penalty.
The news conference was called for Martino to present the World Day of Peace message, in which Pope John Paul (news - web sites) took a swipe at the United States for invading Iraq without the backing of the United Nations.
It was meant as a jab at the United States, completely in keeping with this guy's animus toward the US for the war.
However, as a man devoted to serving God, he may be speaking from a perspective we are unable to understand completely.
We understand it perfectly. He's pissed that we invaded Iraq, he's pissed that we won in Iraq, and he's pissed that we got Hussein and displayed him like a captured monkey.
And, the Pope is too.
From your vantage point at the bottom of the clerical food chain in a discredited AmChurch diocese, do you have a problem with Vatican officials "kowtowing" to this Pope? It was this Euroweenie windtunnel Martino who is made the statements that you wrongly attribute to Pope John Paul II.
Even if the pope agreed with Martino, the Vatican has its own mission that came from Christ. There is nothing in the general Vatican opposition to war that is anti-United States. This Vatican may be relied upon, however, to oppose most clerical liberalism and creeping Unitarianism and in-Church "democracy" schemes and avante-garde sexual views that so infect the sorry AmChurch excuses for Catholicism and that's your real beef along with Vatican resistance to married clergy in the Roman Rite save for converts.
Your dreams die hard, Kumbaya, but die they will.
Saddam Hussein is slime and a summary firing squad is too good for him, but, as Ronaldus Maximus would say, there you go again, using any port in a storm for pope-bashing as a deacon, no less.
If the Church wonders why it loses credibility in the United States, that would be because it is suffers from the wounds inflicted by appointments past, like your Bishop Delaney who actually imported a miscreant priest (his old pal) from Rhode Island to run the Fort Worth diocesan BOY SCOUT program and who tolerates the impudent as minor clergy. Maybe that will change when Fort Worth changes from AmChurch leftist management to Roman Catholic management.
John Cardinal O'Connor, and Archbishop Renato Martino, UN Observer for the Vatican, greet Secretary General Kofi Annan and his wife Nane Annan in front of Holy Family Church on W. 47th Street.
Exactly, and is it any wonder that he feels sympathy for Saddam? This reveals a lot about his motives and ability to make sound judgements.
Remember, avoid the male...
Got Milk, Head Butt, Pile Driver with Slow Mooo-tion Matrix Action scenes. Way To Cool! Best laugh I had all day as well as some of these comments on this thread.
I want to thank the moderator for keeping this post open because I've never witness anti-roman catholic rhetoric before.
Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace department and a former papal envoy to the United Nations (news - web sites), told a news conference it would be "illusory" to think the arrest of the former Iraqi president would heal all the damage caused by a war which the Holy See opposed.
If the Vatican had a pro war policy it would have appeared to the Arab Muslims like another crusade. The French, Germans and Russian politicians had the same appeasement policies to save their cities from burning to the ground from the Arab mobs. While their intelligent officers work behind the scenes with the Mossad, MI6 & CIA.
Can't you people read between the lines?
Anyway thanks for the laugh RBA!
I take it the Cardinal has never been to the dentist.
Martino is, no doubt, a fool but "Goombah????" Is that what AmChurch pretenders think of Vatican officials or is that a term that you apply to Italians generally?
When was Martino ever Apostolic Nuncio to the United States?
Metrosexual ecclesiastics? Aren't you confusing him with your diocese's former BOY SCOUT director? Or your fellow students at the Dallas Pink Palace of yesteryear? Or many of the regular writers for the National "Catholic" Reporter?
You demean genuine patriotism by employing the phony kind to work out your AmChurch resentments against Rome.
Cannot wait for the day when Fort Worth has an actual Roman Catholic bishop installed to bring the minor clergy to heel.
I suspect that many Europeans feel this way, this is the surest reason I can think of for a public trial of Saddam. Let whiny Eurotrash wring their hands over some real victims for a change.
Silence would have been nice. Instead, the French, the Germans, the Russians, and the Vatican actively worked against the United States prior to the war, by vetoing resolutions in the UN and tipping off Iraqis about US plans.
The Vatican certainly can oppose war, but allowing an anti-US renegade like Martino to label the US' actions "criminal" (as he did last March) is over the line.
It was necessary to show to the world, and especially the people of Iraq, that the man they fear, who terrorized them for decades, is indeed in custody, and no longer in a position to harm them. It may have been humiliating, but Saddam is the one who put himself in a humiliating position, by failing to abide by the agreements he participated in, and then by hiding rather than surrendering with honor.
Not happening. The Catholic Church continues to grow and will until the end of time.
One Cardinal in rome talking out his a$$ is not representative of the entire Catholic Church and to think otherwise is assinine.
Cardinals come and go; the Church and its teaching (which this statement is not) are given to us until the end of time.
Proper theology trumps politics, IMO.
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