1978 is known as the year of the Three Popes. On August 6, Pope Paul V1 died and his successor, John Paul 1 died suddenly in his sleep 33 days after he was elected Pope.
I think he was the Pope who gave the Papal Blessing to the Loreto National School, Killarney.
On October 14, 1978, 111 Cardinals met to elect a new Pope. They meet in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican and let the world know what is happening by means of a smoke signal coming through a chimney leading to the roof of the chapel a smoke signal is sent out to tell the outside world what is happening.
Bundles of chemical sticks lay ready to be burnt in it, some making black smoke and some white.
If the smoke from the chimney was white a new Pope has been chosen. Twenty three years ago the eyes of the world were fixed on that chimney.
The TV cameras and crews were in St. Peter s Square and there was a spotlight trained on the chimney in case the signal came at night.
It was just after 5pm on the second day of the conclave that a puff of smoke was seen. It was greyish at first but it soon turned to white. Next the senior Cardinal comes out and utters the famous Latin words "Habemus Papam" we have a Pope.
Then, when the cheering died down, he announced the name.
"He is Karol Wojtyla. He has chosen the name, John Paul 11", said the Cardinal. The crowd was a bit mesmerised.
The choice was a surprise the first none-Italian Pope for 450 years and he was a Pope from a communist country, behind the Iron Curtain, being the Archbishop of Krakow, Poland when elected.
Ever since his election Pope John Paul 11 has captivated the world even though he has been stricken with Parkinson s Dis-ease for the past few years he has still travelled and met his flock throughout the world.
Last week the Pope was in Canada where he spoke to thousands of Catholic worshippers from 172 countries for the World Youth Day Festivities.
This was Pope John Paul s 97th trip abroad. Tim Reid in The Times (July 29, 2002) stated: "the really compelling sight was watching how the shrunken exhausted leader of the world s one billion Catholics can still intoxicate a crowd like a rock star."
The Pope went fromCanada to Guatemala and Mexico where he canonised Juan Diego Cuauatlatoatzin, a (16th century Aztec Indian whose very existence has been challenged) last Thursday.
The Pope returned to Rome an exhausted man. Soon he will be all set and rearing to go on his 98th trip which is back to his roots to his native Poland, where no doubt he will get a tremendous welcome.
Abook of poems by Pope John Paul 11 has been published. Here is an extract from a oem he wrote about St. Peter s Square, the place where pilgrims come from all over the world to be blessed by the Pope. He wrote this poemwhen he was a ilgrimthere himself at a time I d imagine that being chosen as Pope didn t cross his mind:
"Marble floor Our feet meet the earth in this place; There are so many walls, so many colonnades. Yet we are not lost. If we find Meaning and one-ness, It is the floor that guides us Peter, you are the floor, that others May walk over you You guide their steps.. You want to serve their feet that pass As rock serves the hooves of sheep. The rock is a gigantic temple floor, The cross a pasture." This poem is really about the role of the Pope who is shepherd of his flock; a guide to the Church.
To conclude, last month Pope John Paul II gave a hint to the outside world as to who should be his successor when he appointed the 68-year-old Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi as the new Archbishop of Milan, succeeding Cardinal Martini, - a man many had earmarked to be the next Pope. Cardinal Tettamanzi was born at Renate, Milan on March 14, 1934 and, from the age of five, wanted to be a priest.
He entered the minor seminary at the age of 11 and was ordained riest in June 1957 by the future Pope Paul V1 while he Archbishop of Milan.
He is quite an affable, humble man and looks a bit like Pope John XX111.
Pakistan gone back to the Stone Age
WHAT the world allows happen in Pakistan, a country almost 10 times the size of this island with a population of 140,000,000, is dis-graceful to the human race to say the least.
Two examples of this shameful behaviour caught my eye recently. There is a custom in Pakistan that carries more weight than the law of the land which allows relatives of convicted murderers sentenced to death by hanging negotiate their freedom by offering their daughters as child brides to pay off victims relatives.
Has that country gone back to the Stone Age to allow such abominable behaviour?
Here is an extract fromRoy McCarthy s report from The Guardian (July 26):
"Four convicted murderers due to hang in Pakistan tomorrow have tried to escape the gallows by giving their teenage and child daughters in marriage to elderly relatives of their victims.
"The supreme court stepped in after two girls, aged 14 and 15, were forced into marriage earlier this week with two men aged 77 and 55 as compensation to end a family feud. The marriages were broken off, but negotiations under tribal custom continue.
"A girl of 18 is supposed to marry a man of 80, and two girls, aged three and five, were also offered as brides in the deal made in the village of Abbakhel, 150 miles south of Islamabad.
"More than 4,000 villagers gathered to watch the agreement, which was negotiated by local landlords, clerics and former politicians. "Traditional sweets were handed round after the deal, as the convicted men and the relatives of their victims embraced each other.
But the brides screamed for help as the wedding ceremony began on Tuesday.
The houses of the brides presented a mourning scene as shrieks and sounds of crying were heard, a Pakistani paper reported.
After reports of the agree-ment appeared in the local press, the supreme court ruled that the lower courts should intervene.
"The compromise deal appears to have been reached in violation of the law of the land, and against the norms of the civilised world" the chief justice, Sheikh Riaz Almed, said.
Apparently under pressure from the government, the mayor of the nearby town of Mianwali said the two marriages had been broken off.
Witnesses said police officers had stepped in to free the teenage girls. But the mayor said negotiations between the convicts and their victims relatives as allowed under local traditions continued.
"Now the deal is in limbo. We are trying to find a better solution he said.
And now here is even worse behaviour that is allowed take place in that country which was part of the British Empire, right up until 1947 and has its cricket team and is participating in the Commonwealth Games presently being held in Manchester.
This report is taken from a newspaper in Pakistan is recorded in The Week magazine of July 20, 2002:
"Are we still living in the Middle Ages? "It certainly seems that way, said the Frontier Post (Peshawar). Consider what happened last month in the Punjabi village of Meerwala, after a young girl from the Mastoi clan was spotted "walking unchaperoned" with an 11-year-old boy from the lower-caste Gujar tribe.
"The Mastois felt their honour had been sullied and straightaway convened a village jury, or panchayat, to decide what should be done. The panchayat s verdict was that the boy s 18-year-old unmarried sister should be gang-raped. If she did not submit, ruled the members of the panchayat, then all the women in her family would be raped too.
"So the girl was taken to a hut and assaulted as hundreds of Mastois stood out-side laughing and cheering. She was then forced to walk home naked in front of hundreds of people. One of the four rapists had even sat on the panchayat".
What dreadful behaviour to be allowed happen in any country in this modern age.
You should go down on your knees and thank God that you are living in Holy old Ireland warts and all!
