I’m not conspiratorial. It’s been 12 years, and by removing the article, they certainly don’t remove all the hundreds of bloggers which went nuts over it.
But I thoroughly disagree with your analysis of the nature of the event. We only have the picture to go on, but the full-wide picture makes it look nothing like a formal presentation by the delegation as a whole. And I’m not doubting that the patriarch was a witness, but it’s plain he’d had heard the media assert frequently what had happened. If the pope were on trial, I’d simply like to ask him, “how did you learn that the book was a Koran?”
That said, having seen the botched Assissi interreligious conference, etc., it IS very plausible that the Pope knew it was a Koran and kissed it, anyway; Assissi II was a very different event, indicating to me that John Paul II agreed with many of the complaints about Assissi I, even though he had gone along with Assissi I, at the time.
From the story
I don't know what role who played, save running across a claim or two of who exactly was the man standing next to the pope. It is likely it was not the Chaldean himself, which leaves one of the other two, the Iraqi muslim cleric, or the man from whatever Iraqi "ministry of religion", or what-have-you, however it was put.
The photo doesn't show several persons standing closely together in unison. That doesn't mean they couldn't have been just a few feet out of the picture.
I'd never said the word "formal", nor had I insisted upon them being all arrayed in front of the pope sort-of all at once -- but the words of the Chaldean do rather suggest something of that kind, or at least that they were all present as a group, even if only one person was actually standing before the pope presenting the book, being that he said that "the delegation" presented the koran, not "so-and-say" presented a koran.
It seems to me -- the impression I get -- is that it was a scheduled, small "audience" for the delegation. Rather par for the course. A typical, or common enough visitation attended by a government religious bureau official, a Catholic religious authority of that same nation, and another religious official, that last one being of the dominant religion in that nation. Nothing out of the ordinary, all in all.
That presentation itself is one thing, and as you've said, you were not disputing the Chaldean as being a witness. I was arguing that it is very likely the Chaldean would have had plenty of opportunity to SEE the book, some time before it was presented, if not also as a witness to the event itself. How could he have mistaken that big thing, for something else? It's not likely he was not near enough at some point to not be able to ascertain well enough what it was.
That's a lot of to overcome on the way to the belief the Catholic member of the delegation had no direct knowledge of what the book was, mistakenly getting his info from Iraqi TV, with his own words describing the incident as he did -- for what reason? Just a plain mistake, he never was close enough to see it. Or---Fear for his life being taken by some Iraqi muslim if he offered a different version of the story, even as he was being interviewed by the very Roman Catholic Fides?
How many hoops much we jump through, how much reason must one suspend, to consider much less believe the wives-tales version that is being passed around in some places -- that it was some other book?