Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 12:57am

PopeWatch: Crosshairs

VATICAN-POPE-AUDIENCE

 

Interesting that the Vatican sent out Father Lombardi to deny that ISIS is planning to assassinate the pope:

 

In response to rumors that the Islamic State may be targeting Pope Francis, Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J. said there is no reason for concern.

“There is nothing serious to this. There is no particular concern in the Vatican. This news has no foundation,” the spokesman told CNA Aug. 26.

The rumors spread following an Aug. 25 article published in Italian newspaper “Il Tempo,” which said the number of jihadists in Italy is on the rise due to the influx of unidentified immigrants in the country.

According to the article, Islamic fundamentalists led by Al-Baghdadi plan to “raise the level of confrontation” in Europe and alluded to Israeli sources who said that Pope Francis is “also in the crosshairs of ISIS” as “the greatest exponent of the Christian religions” and the “bearer of false truth.”

Al-Baghdadi has been named as Caliph – the head of state and absolute monarch – of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in western Iraq and north-eastern Syria, and is the former head of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Go here to read the rest.  One thing the Jihadists prize above all is the status, the street creds, that their bloody deeds give them in the Islamic world, at least among those who agree with them.  What greater status could they possibly gain then by killing the Vicar of Christ?  There may be no such plot now, but it is entirely plausible that the Pope would be on a very short list of top targets.

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TomD
TomD
Wednesday, August 27, AD 2014 11:10am

“There may be no such plot now…”
There may not be a plot, but the desire is very much there. One of the second-tier Iranian leaders a few years back commented that Rome had to be destroyed. He didn’t say so, but you can just see the wheels turning in his brain: the Sistine Chapel, the Pieta, all those acts of idolatry, they’ve just got to go. We can be sure that ISIL and the MB and all the rest feel exactly the same way.

Wonder how the centrifuges are doing today…

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, August 27, AD 2014 11:25am

How does the Vatican speak for ISIS?
.
The centrifuges got nothing on us.

TomD
TomD
Wednesday, August 27, AD 2014 11:55am

“The centrifuges got nothing on us.”
Perhaps not, but their fanaticism does, as we have seen in Iraq lately. The fanaticism is also a weakness once we are aroused, but it will cause much damage before we are. If we ever are.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, August 27, AD 2014 12:06pm

TomD: “The centrifuges got nothing on us.”
.
I wrote tongue in cheek. We have a cure for ebola, they do not.

bill bannon
Wednesday, August 27, AD 2014 12:59pm

This link gives 16% of French citizens sympathetic to IS….partly because 40% of immigrants are unemployed. Germany has 3-4% sympathetic to IS. The rest of the article has the good news that two Shite militia in addition to Iraqi forces have gathered to break the seige at Amerli, a Shite city running out of food and water and under seige 78 days. Iraq has air struck IS beseigers and the US will probably join in the relief of Amerli which the UN alerted everyone on Saturday.

http://www.i24news.tv/app.php/en/news/international/middle-east/41647-140827-iraq-masses-forces-to-break-is-siege-of-amerli

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Thursday, August 28, AD 2014 8:49pm

The day is long gone when we could say, “Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim Gun and they have not”. ~Hilaire Belloc

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Thursday, August 28, AD 2014 10:32pm

Would being unemployed make me become sympathetic to ISIS? I don’t think so.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Thursday, August 28, AD 2014 10:36pm

About pope’s in history who were targeted for political reasons…was there threats on B16 after Regensburg?

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