posted on January 11, 2005 11:02:55 AM new
VATICAN CITY -- The Italian cardinal sent by Pope John Paul II in 2003 to try to dissuade President Bush from invading Iraq said Monday that the president promised the U.S. operation would be "quick."
Cardinal Pio Laghi visited Bush at the White House on March 5, 2003, to relay the pope's position that dialogue, not arms, should be used to resolve the crisis over Iraq, which the United States accused of harboring weapons of mass destruction.
"When I went to Washington as the pope's envoy just before the outbreak of the war in Iraq, he [Bush] told me: `Don't worry, your eminence. We'll be quick and do well in Iraq,"' Laghi told Italian Catholic TV station Telepace, which was broadcasting the pontiff's annual address to diplomats.
When the United States went to war in Iraq, Laghi called the attack on Baghdad "tragic and unacceptable."
"Unfortunately, the facts have demonstrated afterward that things took a different course--not rapid and not favorable," he told Telepace. "Bush was wrong."
In his speech to the diplomats, the pope put lobbying against same-sex marriage at the top of the Vatican's agenda for 2005 and also urged politicians in prosperous nations to do more for the millions of hungry people around the globe.
He noted the anguishing news of 2004, from natural disasters--including the tsunami in southern Asia and locust plagues in northern Africa--to "barbarous terrorism which caused bloodshed in Iraq and other countries," and the suffering in Darfur, Sudan.
In a reference to laws permitting marriage between homosexuals or equating the social rights of unwed couples to married ones, the pope said that in some countries, the family's "natural structure" has been challenged.
Families "must necessarily be that of a union between a man and a woman founded on marriage," he said.
He made clear he intends to use his energies to oppose other "challenges of life" issues--abortion, cloning, assisted procreation and embryonic stem cell use.
"The human embryo is a subject identical to the human being, which will be born at the term of its development," the pope said.
And more must be done about the world's hungry, he said.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- "Give it up for George W. Bush, the best friend international jihad ever had."
posted on January 11, 2005 11:13:04 AM new
You Democratic Liberals really seem to have had a lot of trouble with the definition of the word "lie" in recent years haven't you?
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posted on January 11, 2005 01:37:39 PM new
Logansdad, you have got to be Cathoic, your recent thread about Catholic schools, now about the Pope?
Personally, since I do not go to Catholic mass and haven't in a long time, what the Pope thinks is on the bottom of my list.
And the Pope, Holy Father, whatever, is one reason I don't agree with the Church about.
posted on January 12, 2005 08:37:54 AM new
NTS, Yes I was brought up Catholic and still consider myself Catholic. However I have not gone to church in many years becasue there is alot about the Church I do not agree with.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- "Give it up for George W. Bush, the best friend international jihad ever had."
