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Reminiscences on Late Pope, John Paul II
April 03, 2005
Tika Jankovic "A legend has gone, for ever. Jon Paul II alias Karol Woytila left this
world for another, unknown one, better or worse than this- nobody can tell. His
spiritual and political legacy will surely inspire an army of biographers, hired
or on their own, to chronicle the long, shiny and shady, path of "one of the
most important figures-some might argue, the most important figure-of the
Twentieth Century" ("Witness to Hope", George Weigel, 1999). Let us now look
into a few facts of his life, already written in, or omitted from published
biography works.
In the dramatic 1948 election campaign in Italy, run by CIA , the
right-wing- pro-USA Christian Democrats scored a crucial victory over the
coalition of the popular Communist and Socialist parties. Emboldened with its
first successful grand operation abroad, CIA embarked on another
even more significant clandestine Cold War operation on the President Truman's watch: shaking up and destabilizing the Socialist Polish Government through the Catholic Church of Poland with the intent to tear Poland off the Soviet orbit. After four years of a massive smuggling of printing and communication equipment to the Polish underground opposition to the Government, the CIA chiefs learned from the Polish Government radio of their botched undertaking: all the enormous assistance meant to the opposition fell in the hands of the Polish intelligence, that had brilliantly fooled their Washington adversaries for all this time. Yet, the Catholic Church of Poland has remained the chief US hope and pillar for the next planned ventures into the heartland of Russia, again through Poland. The renewed hope came with Polish priest Karol Woytila, ordained by
Pope Pius XII in 1958 a bishop, the youngest bishop in memory of Catholic
Church, and installed as Archbishop of Krakow in 1964, to be created a cardinal
by Pope Paul VI, on June 28, 1967. After the assassination by poison in the
Vatican of John Paul I, alias Albino Luciani, popularly known as "Smiling Pope",
on September 28, 1978, after only 33 days as a Pope, but hell bent on reforming
the Church and cleaning the deeply rooted corruption in its high ranks, Cardinal
Woytila became the new Pope, John Paul II. He was elected by the College of
Cardinals on October 16, 1978
after a two day of intrigue and aggressive lobbying by the Western cardinals to install Cardinal Woytila into the Pope throne. Starting with only eight cardinal votes in the first round, Woytila defeated the Italian born opponent, Cardinal Benelli in the last, eighth round with 97 vz. 13 votes and became the first non-Italian Pope in history. Why the Polish Pope was picked by the cardinals if not for helping expose the Iron Curtain gates to a battering ram, aimed at them from the Polish soil, the Western invaders of Russia traditionally used. The first move in that direction was made at the fifty-minute meeting at
the Vatican Library on June 7,
1982 between President Reagan and John Paul II. They sealed a deal of attacking
the Soviet Union through the popular, anti-Government Polish movement
Solidarity, led by Lech
Walesa, at the shipyard of Gdansk (now long closed, thousands of
workers left jobless for good).
This "holy alliance" set its goal of secretly joining forces in support of the Solidarity union by all means, in order not only to "pressure Warsaw, but to free all of Eastern Europe" which, in essence, was the main objective of the entire Cold War. That is how President Reagan and Pope John Paul II conspired "to hasten the demise of Communism", as claimed by some media pundits. One of the less known conspirators in the same, "unholy" game, Mikhail Gorbachev, credited the Pope by saying: "Without Pope John Paul II, the "perestroyka" (openness- the dismantling of the Soviet Union) would be impossible". Books may be compiled with the worldly deeds by John Paul II during his 27
years at the helm of the Vatican Empire, not much in the accord with his
Christian faith and preaching. I will bring up here just a few episodes.
1. Pope's view of "humanitarian interventions "Wars between nations and domestic conflicts should not sentence
defenseless civilians to die from hunger for selfish or partisan motives. The
principles of noninterference in a country's domestic affairs did not apply in
these circumstances. Therefore, the Pope argued, the conscience of humanity,
supported by provisions of international humanitarian law, asks that
humanitarian intervention( such as the one applied to Yugoslavia by US/NATO in
1999?) be
obligatory where the survival of population and entire ethnic groups is seriously compromised. This is a duty for nations and the international community. (John Paul II, "The World's Hunger and Humanity's Conscience" , December 24, 1992, p. 475). That "humanitarian intervention"-meaning military intervention- by outside
powers to rescue threatened population- could be morally justified in situations
of impending genocide was not very much in dispute.... Was John Paul II
suggesting that a "duty" of "humanitarian intervention"
now lay on the world's only superpower, the United States? ("Witness to Hope", George Weigel, p. 665). Apparently, Pope John Paul II tacitly endorsed, if not abetted, the future
US imperial goals by waging its "humanitarian wars", as it did in Yugoslavia.
The bombs and missiles that rained
on Serbia for 78 days in 1999, had an imprint of the Pope's seal ring, as well. 2. Recognition of Slovenia and Croatia
The Holy See was the first state entity to officially recognize
independence of Croatia and Slovenia on January 13, 1992, knowing full well that
this act would lead to the outbreak of civil wars in Yugoslavia. French
President Francois Mitterand three times said to Archbishop Tauran "that the
Holy See's recognition of Slovenia and Croatia was responsible for the breakup
of Yugoslavia". The Tauran's defended the Vatican's decision as "the necessity
to stop the aggression of the Serb dominated Federal Army on those countries".
Later in the civil war
John Paul II pretentiously lamented over his decision to grant Slovenia and Croatia his holy blessing. 3. Pope's "Christian" Appeal to President Clinton
At the Fourth International World Youth Day in Denver, Colorado on August
12-15, 1993
John Paul II, instrumental in breaking up Yugoslavia a year earlier, spoke to a crowd of over 200,000 young people from all over the world, piled up in the Denver Bronco football stadium. At this monumental gathering, besides his usual ceremonial addressing to the throng, Pope did not miss a chance to condemned the Serbs and appealed to President Clinton to get them in line with bombs. 4. Pope's Penchant For Beatification and Canonization
As the written records indicate, from his inauguration in October
1978 to June 1995, John Paul II has created five times as many saints as
all his twenty-century predecessor combined, and has, also, multiplied the
number of beatifications. In the reign of John Paul II, as of June 1995, there
have been 271 canonization and 631 beatification names, with several hundred
cases pending. ("The Missionary Position", Christopher Hitchens, 1995 ). Among
the Pope's beatified martyrs found himself a Croatian war criminal, Cardinal
Aloize Stepinec, convicted of his involvement in the genocide, perpetrated by
his fellow Croatian Ustasha, over more than a million Serbs, Jews and Gypsies
during their reign of terror in the Independent State of Croatia in WWII.
Since the list of the John Paul's religious and political activities is
endless, I am closing at this
point. Any further contributions along this line are welcome. |
