The Pope is said to be worried over a possible war on Iraq
Posted on 02/10/2003 7:17:40 AM PST by RCW2001
Retired French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray is expected to tell the Iraqis they should co-operate fully with UN weapons inspectors.
He will be travelling by air on Monday to Jordan, from where he will fly on to Baghdad on Tuesday, carrying a personal letter from Pope John Paul II to President Saddam Hussein.
The Vatican has already had assurances from Iraq that the cardinal will be received by the president himself.
The Pope's aides say he remains profoundly concerned over the possibility of war against Iraq and especially for the possible effects of the war upon the Iraqi people, 3% of whom are Catholics.
A Vatican statement said Cardinal Etchegaray's mission was to show the Pope's concern over the situation and ask "Iraqi authorities to reflect seriously on the need for an effective international co-operation based on justice and international law aimed at guaranteeing the people [of Iraq] the supreme good of peace".
Cardinal Etchegaray still plays a prominent behind-the-scenes role inside the Vatican and has travelled numerous times to the Middle East on Vatican business, says the BBC's Rome correspondent, David Willey.
It will be his third diplomatic mission to Baghdad.
He first went to the Iraqi capital in 1985 when he helped to arrange an exchange of prisoners of war between Iran and Iraq while they were at war.
Then in 1998, he visited Baghdad to determine if a papal visit was feasible.
That never happened.
Diplomatic moves
The pope has has previously said war against Iraq would be a "defeat for humanity." In the past weeks, the Vatican has been involved in a flurry of diplomatic initiatives to try to avert a conflict.
The pope held talks with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on Friday and they made a joint appeal for peace.
Later this week, the Pope is to meet Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz at the Vatican and next week he will be seeing UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
On Sunday, he made a dramatic appeal for world prayer to avert war and called for renewed efforts to avoid a war.
"One must not resign oneself, almost as if the war were inevitable," he said.
| 10 Feb 2003 14:21 Iraq would welcome Pope peace trip - Iraqi envoy |
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ROME, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Iraq would welcome a visit by Pope John Paul in the hope that it would promote peace and stave off a U.S.-led military attack, the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican said on Monday. Ambassador A. Amir Alanbari said the Baghdad government would have "no hesitation" in issuing a formal invitation and added that Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz may tell the pope at a meeting on Friday that the door to Baghdad was open. "I think a visit to Iraq by the pope would be a great blessing to the Iraqi people and to the cause of peace throughout the world," the envoy told Reuters in an interview. |
Granted....I would like to see that spelled out.
As for Afghanistan, are you telling me those people aren't relishing their release from under the thumb of that brutal, abhorrent Taliban theocracy?
We don't get too much info out of Afghanistan, but my understanding is that it is quickly digressing into government by warlord, that the Taliban is still about, that Al Quaida is still there, that the U.S. has retreated from some of it's positions; it is not the rosy picture we would like to believe. The Taliban was embraced by the population because it provided order. If nothing fundamentally changes, and chaos and murder become the rule, then the kite flying freedom that is so impressive will be short-lived.
C'mon Chuck...there is a natural human yearning for freedom, no matter what traditions a culture has imposed on itself for however long. Russia hasn't had much of a track record for freedom either, from Rurik up through Gorbachev—are you saying democractic government shouldn't have been tried there, either?
Russia's culture did have some characteristics it shares with the west. Christianity for one. But I do like the "natural yearning for freedom" bit. Optimism can be fun.:o)
"Africa remains a continent at risk. Of its fifty-three States, seventeen are experiencing military conflicts, either internally or with other States. I am thinking in particular of Sudan where, in addition a cruel war, a terrible human tragedy is unfolding; Eritrea and Ethiopia which are once again in dispute; and Sierra Leone, where the people are still the victims of merciless struggles. On this great continent there are up to eight million refugees and displaced persons practically abandoned to their fate. The countries of the Great Lakes region still bear open wounds resulting from the excesses of ethnocentrism, and they are struggling amid poverty and insecurity; this is also the case in Rwanda and Burundi, where an embargo is further aggravating the situation. The Democratic Republic of Congo still has far to go in working out its transition and experiencing the stability to which its people legitimately aspire, as the massacres which recently occurred at the very beginning of the year near the town of Uvira testify. Angola remains in search of a peace which cannot be found and in these days is experiencing a development which causes great concern and which has not spared the Catholic Church. The reports regularly coming to me from these tormented regions confirm my conviction that war is always destructive of our humanity, and that peace is undoubtedly the pre-condition for human rights. To all these peoples, who often send me pleas for help, I wish to give the assurance that I am close to them. May they know also that the Holy See is sparing no effort to bring about an end to their sufferings and to find equitable solutions to the existing serious problems, on both the political and humanitarian levels."
Pope John Paul II 11 January 1999
Sorry Smed -- Symbolic gestures and words, and acknowledgement of the suffering convince me of nothing...
Rome, should she fully mobilize her clout, influence, and resources around the world could do far more to help stop the slaughter of Christians in Africa.
He became Pope, and suddenly is credited with doing miraculous things in Poland with no evidence to back it up - and reporters tracking it have run against a stone wall. I have no doubt that he has some sense of Polish nationalism, but aside from that, nothing seems out of the ordinary.
There is, however, the level of scorn he heaps upon the nation that he relies upon as his wallet, and a record of inaction against those clerics who support autocratic, brutal dictatorships, as well as clerics who create scandal here.
I'm sure that Saddam's thinking the same thing.
It takes time to fill those warheads, it takes time to produce that anthrax and VX, it takes time to hunt down opposition leaders, it takes time to smuggle materials and parts in and WMD out. Hey, give enough time and we can just settle for being blackmailed by yet another terrorist sponsor for the next 50 years as happened with North Korea.
The church didn't stop 9/11 and cannot stop terrorism because terrorists don't give a rat's behind what the church thinks, unless they can get the church to buy time for them, in which case they will engage in any talks they can. They will keep on killing and people like Hussein will keep on funding terrorism, no matter how much some pacifists get in our way. Note that pacifists never get in the way of the sort of people who start wars- they only get in the way of the people who have to finish them. Why? Because pacifists are always LATE. They're like cockroaches, and only come out after someone's punched out your lights!
The Vatican seems to be confused into thinking the war hasn't begun yet. Heck, a lot of people seem to be confused about that.
But you see, we ALREADY are at war. The time for the Pope's intervention was more than a decade ago. Intervening in it now just gives more time to the individuals who started the war, so that the may kill more of their own dissidents (take note of the Kurdish leaders who were recently killed) , and plan more defenses and move more and more weapons into his cities where civilians and schools and hospitals will act as shields, and have time to put more and more agents in place overseas, perhaps even here.
Anything short of force now will only leave the Baathists in power and the Iraqi people will be right back where they started and frankly, so will we- in a one-sided war where we take whatever terrorists and their supporters care to dish out, or have to adjust to having to leave terrorists be because they have nukes. Terrorists will find a total safehaven there, forever untouchable because it would be impossible to motivate anyone to remove them if we do not do it now. The terrorists would have all the encouragement they need from their political success and their duping of well-meaning, but foolish pacifists, and that will only lead to increased use of nameless, blameless terrorism by states who wish to manipulate public opinion as Iraq has so successfully done.
Note that pacifists never get in the way of the sort of people who start wars- they only get in the way of the people who have to finish them.
Do facts interest you?
"Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks...
Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.
Albert Einstein
Time Magazine, 12/23/40**************************************
The charity and work of Pope Pius XII during World War II so impressed the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, that in 1944 he was open to the grace of God which led him into the Catholic faith. As his baptismal name, he took the same one Pius had, Eugenio, as his own. Later Israel Eugenio Zolli wrote a book entitled, Why I Became a Catholic.
**************************************
"The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas... he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all... the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism... he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace."
The New York Times editorial
12/25/41 (Late Day edition, p. 24)**************************************
"This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent... Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were lifeless things."
The New York Times editorial
12/25/42 (Late Day edition, p. 16)
Hitler was an enemy of Christianity. And his men imprisoned or killed many thousands of Catholic clergy, especially in Poland. Learn some real history, my dear.
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