Pope of the week, assassination special

[Ace42X]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4767652.stm

Those ruskies!

[EN[i]GMA]

You can't kill the Pope, he's like God's best buddy!

[yeahwho]

Solidarity! Real Spirit.

On 16th October of 1978, bishop of Cracow, Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/Pope-poland.jpg). A year later, during his first pilgrimage to Poland, millions of Poles attended his masses. The Pope called for respect of national traditions and stressed the importance of freedom and human rights while also denouncing violent action.

While this whole movement was endorsed and promoted by the Reagan administration, including the nationwide strikes through the 80's, he was dismantling and busting labor unions and workers rights in his own country.

This double standard we live daily, a real workers movement has power, as evidenced by this story.

[Pres Zount]

The russians wouldn't have nearly killed him.

[yeahwho]

The russians wouldn't have nearly killed him.

It's really odd that the Pope survived in the light of the damage done by this shooting. He either is a huge bullshitter or an extremely enlightened man, I followed the links on the BBC article and found this to be an interesting read (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4290101.stm).

For the first time, the Pope puts on public record his belief that the shooting was commissioned by someone other than his would-be assassin, the Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca.

During Christmas 1983 the Pope visited Agca, who was serving a life sentence for attempted murder, in a Rome prison.

'Higher power'

"Ali Agca is a professional killer," the Pope writes.

"This means the attempt was not his initiative, that it was someone else who planned it, that someone else had commissioned it.

[franscar]

For a professional killer he was pretty crappy at his job.