Vatican Threatens “Massive Retaliation”
There was tension behind the scenes here in Rome throughout Holy Week, as Vatican security and Italian police tried to preempt a possible attack on Pope Benedict—and thousands of Christian pilgrims—a threat implied in the latest message attributed to Osama Bin Laden. The terrorist leader accused Pope Benedict of leading a “new Crusade” against Moslems around the world, and blamed him in part for the republication of cartoons in Danish newspapers which depicted Islam’s founder, Mohammed, in an unflattering light. (Moslems largely consider any depiction of their prophet as an act of blasphemy.)
While the Islamist threat to the Vatican was widely publicized, less attention was paid to the Vatican response. Any attack on the person of the pope or Catholic holy sites would be met by “massive, disproportionate retaliation,” warned Monsignor Arcimboldo Bugiardo, Prefect of the Congregation for Armaments, speaking to this reporter behind one of the pillars of Bernini’s famed Colonnade, which surrounds St. Peter’s Square. “These people have no idea who they’re screwing with,” he said.
Msgr. Bugiardo would neither confirm nor deny widespread reports that the Vatican city-state has acquired an independent nuclear deterrent--purchased, sources suggest, from Eastern-rite Catholic Ukrainians in 1992, at the insistence of the hawkish Pope John Paul II. “I have nothing to say about that,” the priest said. “I am definitely not saying that under the right circumstances, the dome of St. Peter’s could open up like a missile silo. That is not what I’m saying,” he said.
The 57-year-old Vatican official, himself a veteran of the “Draghi” unit of the Italian special special forces unit 185° Reg. R.A.O. (a unit trained in desert warfare), declined to offer specifics, but noted that the Vatican’s Secret Archives contains a list of Islamic leaders and holy sites that could be targeted, ranging from Islam’s holiest site, the shrine of the Qaaba in Mecca, and important Sunni imams, all the way down to “those stinky hookah pipe cafes over by Termini.” Bugiardo confided. “They could get a lot smokier, if you know what I mean.”
Teams of Vatican-sponsored commandos are “already in place” at many such sites, Bugiardo noted—while others are “just a few phone calls away. I call a guy in Naples, he calls a guy in Sicily, he calls a guy in Sardinia—do I have to spell this out for you?” Bugiardo explained.
On the other hand, Bugiardo disclaimed knowledge of the shadowy “direct-action” group of international pro-papal terrorists calling itself “Al-Chiesa,” which operates in some 43 countries, and has claimed responsibility for dozens of assassinations, and acts of vandalism against coin-operated condom machines in truck stops and discos around the world. “We have nothing to do with those people, do you understand me?” Bugiardo averred, holding this reporter by his lapels. “We are a religion of peace.”
Comments
Thank you, sir, for a good laugh!
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How many divisions DOES the Pope have?
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Pray ask Msgr. Bugiardo if he can anathematize rumors of the Neutron Censer, a tritium transubstantiation boosted Thermyrrhnuclear weapon of Mass Dispensation designed by renegade Jesuits bent on vaporizing gnostics while leaving the preterite unscathed?
Isn’t he worried about the Rasputin Brigade deploying The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch if deterrence fails?
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Of course, they are all armed with Holy Hand Grenades, I hope!!!!
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(chortle! chortle!)
Let’s take yet another jab at the “other” eh?
All in good fun, eh?
You sound like a good neocon, albeit of the pseudo-intellectual, supposedly “religious” variety.
Coin operated condom dispensers indeed! You wont find those things in Islamic countries. Nor any of the garbage emanating from Hollywood.
Osama Bin Laden? Now that IS funny considering he’s probably still in the employ of various western “intelligence” agencies.
You scoff?
Go ahead then and continue to believe in bogey-men instead of the REAL bad guys who dress just like “US” in suits and ties and not like “THEM” in robes and turbans.
bah!
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One must be filled with remorse that we have sunk to such a state that the chain of action now goes through Sicily and ends at Sardinia.
Sardinians are tough bunch mind you but if we’ve lost the Sicilian contribution to Mutual Assured Destruction well it cannot be much more time until , well.... Corsicans lie down with their German Bank Branches.
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Osama bin Laden died of kidney failure years ago.
This is obviously an attempt to fan the flames of
Muslim hatred.
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Cry havoc and let slip the Papal bulls…
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If only it were true. I’m all for peace, freedom, dignity of the human person, blah, blah, blah, but you mess wid Benny, you messing wid me.
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“Coin operated condom dispensers indeed! You wont find those things in Islamic countries. Nor any of the garbage emanating from Hollywood.”
You won’t find a Catholic Mass either.
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“You won’t find a Catholic Mass either. “
True.
However, judging by my experience, especially these past 10 years, you wont find a catholic mass HERE either!
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Lets see, pulling out the Catechism on “just war”, Abortion is: A present and ongoing grave threat (what else do you call a holocaust). All other methods of mitigation have failed. Success is easy as there are probably fewer abortionists than AlQueda members or cells in the US and fewer clinics and they are in the yellow pages. And it would cause almost “no collateral damage” except to right-wing hypocrisy.
Or as I’ve put it, if an Iraqi abortionist - insurgent runs into his clinic, is it right or wrong to bomb the clinic and/or assassinate him?
Let the Vatican declare abortionists enemy combatants and let the conflict begin.
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Bugiardo (liar in English), is it? Very droll.
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John, I think that your talent for satire is wasted here, with
so many literal minded readers.
I think that role-players may ask you more about Al-Chiesa, so that
they can incorporate it in their games.
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satire?!?!?!
ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!
N O W I ....er....don’t get it, i’m just too unsophisticated ‘n all.
(please!)
I’m all for humour, laughter is the the best tonic and all but, as mom explained to me years ago, there’s such a thing as a joke with a jag.
Mr. Zmirak’s talents would be put to better use slagging off targets far closer to home than the fictional bogey men that he occasionally attacks.
The greatest threats to catholicism and western civilization lie within, not without, as I’m quite sure he knows.
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Thank you John, I haven’t had a laugh like that since the last time someone handed me a Jack Chick comic.
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Oh John, you had my hopes up at first, until I got to the part about “Draghi.”
Don’t you know that the Vatican employs Croatian descendants of the 16th Mounted
Imperial Hussars, all of whom are from the Dalmatian regions of the empire as
its “special forces” troops?
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By Jingo, this is not the first
time that the war party has sought
to rally the Vatican to wars of
agression. One may chose to
remember the fraudulent Roger
Casement diaries that rallied
the Irish Americans to the
cause of the Brits in WW I,
amongst a multitude of more
recent disinformation ploys.
With an aging Benedict on the
verge of senility, the latest
OBL piece has deeply shaken
the Vatican antiwar position,
not to mention the incredible
blunder-i.e.showcasing of the
baptismal ceremony of the self
hating muslim and bigot to the
world at St Peter’s this Easter.
The Holy Father needs another
vacation pronto. There is
mischief afoot.
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What was wrong about the Pope performing a baptism? If anything, it shows Muslims in Europe that Christianity is for them as well. The Pope can and does many things that I abhor but that doesn’t move my blood pressure too much.
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The baptism of Magdi Allam at Benedict’s Easter Sunday Mass
was extraordinary in view of Allam’s very contentious views
as a locally well known author
and journalist. The staging and
timing of this ceremony is remarkable considering the Vatican’s avowed and ongoing interest in seeking recon-
ciliation with the Muslim Community.
To learn more about Allam
see the article entitled
“Pope baptizes prominent Muslim”
from the online edition of the
Jerusalem Post dated March 23.
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Are you sure you weren’t interviewing Msgr. Kristol or Father Frum or the Holy Order
of Pod People?
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Mons Bugiardo means Mons. Liar.....
That’s the meaning of the name in Italian
Many thanks for a good laugh
Antonio
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Mara Salvatrucha 13 is a good candidate to be transformed into ‘Al Chiesa’.
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