the Pope and I

The Pope and me

By David Verveer

Today, the Pope is coming to visit us here in Israel, and indeed, as head of state and leader of the Roman Catholics, he should be treated with the Red Carpet protocol with trumpets and guards of honor. Our President, Prime Minister and other important people will be there to welcome him and tell him that we are happy with his kind gesture to come and visit us, 60 + years after his native people finished slaughtering our brethren.

Of course, we can not blame this German priest for the wrong doing of the Nazi beast; he was at the time only 16 years old, and member of the Hitler Jugend, the Nazi youth group. His participation or non-participation as young boy in extermination of the Jews would not have made any difference, and sure, more than 60 years have passed for him to regret his miniscule role in this sad era, I personally do not hate him for that.

But something peculiar is happening on his holy-land tour, instead of asking our forgiveness for this sad era, his deeds and un- holy thoughts, this ultra conservative German prince of the Christian World, comes here to criticize us, to tell us how to treat the Palestinians, at the same time, his rulings on issues such as his opposing to the use of condoms (while Aids are daily killing thousands of good Catholic Africans every day), the same representative of God on our earth, who declares homo sexually people, mentally ill. Could it be that this priest has doubts on God's creations, as the homo sexual is just like his holiness him self, a product of creation (or is my logic betraying me).

He is the last person on earth to be critical of the Jews and Israel, both because his murky past and human consideration with the plight of others. This un-clean person is today paying a visit to Yad va Shem, the Holocaust museum, to pay his tribute to the crimes of his countrymen 60+ years ago, and of course, he will claim innocence, like all Germans he will say something in the genre of "Ich habe es nicht gewust".

Does his holiness realize on his historical pilgrimage, that his God was a full blood, pedigreed Jew, as were his disciples, including Saint Paul, all with 4 Jewish Grand Parents? We should realize that this dictator who rules the Catholics world-wide is a watered down replica of the popes during the crusades, whose visit to the Holocaust memorial museum is an insult to their memory.