What was your screen name before you changed it to Pitiricus?
Post 100 contains an aricle from the Catholic News Service regarding the Vatican's relationship with Arafat. I'll post another from them below which contains essentially the same quotes as ABC.
Pope expresses closeness to Arafat's family, Palestinian people
Sarah Delaney
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope John Paul II expressed his closeness to the family of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and to the Palestinian people and prayed "that the star of harmony soon shine on the Holy Land."
The pope's message followed the Nov. 11 announcement of Arafat's death in a Paris military hospital.
The pope prayed that Israelis and Palestinians soon "may live reconciled among themselves as two independent and sovereign states."
The message was written by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, and authorized by the pope, a Vatican statement said. It was addressed to Rawhi Fattuh, president of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Cardinal Sodano wrote, "to the condolences of His Holiness, I cordially adjoin my own."
Earlier, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a statement that Arafat "was a leader of great charisma, who loved his people and who sought to guide them toward national independence."
"May God, in his mercy, receive the soul of the illustrious deceased," the statement read, "and bring peace to the Holy Land, with two independent and sovereign states, fully reconciled between themselves."
The Vatican was expected to name an envoy to attend Arafat's Nov. 12 funeral in Cairo, Egypt.
Afif Safieh, the Palestine Liberation Organization's representative to the Holy See, said the good diplomatic relations that Arafat established with the Vatican would not change.
"President Arafat valued his relations with the Holy See and with the Holy Father," Safieh said in a telephone interview from London. "He always considered himself to be the representative of all the Palestinians," including Christians.
Arafat met with Pope John Paul 12 times between 1982 and his confinement by Israel to his headquarters in Ramallah, West Bank, in 2001. In 2000, the Vatican and the Palestinian National Authority signed an agreement that guaranteed the rights of Christian and their churches in Palestinian territories.
"This will continue. We as Palestinians are the custodians of all the spiritual messages that were born in Palestine," Safieh said.
Arafat, he said, had put relations between Palestinian authorities and the Vatican "on the right track."
Now, he added "it is our duty to continue this privileged relationship with the Holy See. We will honor our agreement."
Arafat "valued very much his personal encounters with the pope," Safieh said, and even after his confinement Arafat "continued to consult with him (the pope) in decisive moments for the Middle East."
Father Justo Lacunza Balda, director of Rome's Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies, said the restrictions Israel put on Arafat "did not help the prospect of peace."
The death of the Palestinian leader "marks a U-turn in history," he said, because it may give a chance for the emergence of a new generation that "wants to live in a better world. The new generation in Israel as well is fed up with violence."
He said Christians in the Palestinian territories were feeling insecure following the bombings of churches in Iraq. Five churches were bombed in August, five in October, and car bombs in Baghdad Nov. 8 damaged two Orthodox churches and one Catholic church.
Father Lacunza said the bombings in Baghdad show "that there is a grander project to rid the whole area of any minorities, no matter if it is Christian, Jewish or Zoroastrian. There is a message that minorities are not wanted."
"We have to put the problem of Christian minorities in the context of the whole Middle East," he said.
The guarantee of freedom of religion for minorities in any country "is the responsibility and the duty of the state, not the church," Father Lacunza said.