In an interview with Buenos Aires favela publication La Carcova News, the Pope said he had asked the Lord to take care of him.

"But if your will is that I die or that they do something to me, I ask you just one favour: that it doesn't hurt because I am a big wimp when it comes to physical pain," the Pope said.

If fanatics want to kill him, it is "God's will", he said. "Life is in God's hands."

Groups that could pose threats to the Pope reportedly include Islamist militants and the Italian mafia.

The interview with La Carcova News came about after the shantytown's parish priest collated inquiries from hundreds of children and young adults and boiled them down to about a dozen questions.

When the priest visited the Pope at his Vatican residence last month, he handed the written questions to Francis, who gave answers on the spot.

One of the questions saw the Pope asked about young people's attraction to "virtual relationships" and how to help them escape "their world of fantasy" and to experience "real relationships".

The Pope said "sometimes virtual relationships are not imaginary, but are concrete" and real.

However, he said, the best thing is for people to have real, physical interaction and contact with each other.

He said the big risk he sees is with people's ability to gather such a huge amount of information that nothing is done with it and it has no impact on changing lives.

He said this process turns young people into a sort of "youth museum".

Having a rich fruitful life is not found in "the accumulation of information or just through virtual communication, but in changing the reality of existence. In the end, it means loving".

Sources

• The Tablet
• Catholic News Service
• Image: CBC

Threats to kill the Pope by the terrorist Islamic State were revealed by Iraq's ambassador to the Holy See in an interview in an Italian newspaper on Tuesday.

But Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, said there was "nothing serious" in the threats and that "this news has no foundation".

"There is no particular concern in the Vatican," he said.

Fr Lombardi confirmed that the Pope would travel in the same open-top car he uses in St Peter's Square in Rome while he is in Albania this weekend.

The Pope said he decided to visit Albania because "it has suffered greatly as a result of a terrible atheist regime and is now realising the peaceful co-existence of its various religious components".

Pope Francis' trip to Albania will be his first to a Muslim-majority country.

His second, to Turkey, is expected to take place at the end of November.

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Nicola Gratteri says the Mafia is upset by the Pope's efforts to make the Church more financially transparent.

For years the Mafia has laundered money and made investments, taking advantage of the connivance of the Church, he said.

Gratteri's comments were made against a backdrop of Pope Francis, Monday, again putting clerics and crime bosses on notice.

In a fiery sermon against corruption, the pope said christians who lead a "double life" by giving money to the Church while getting it from nefarious means should be punished.

Reinforcing his comment the pontiff used Luke 17:2, "Jesus says: It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea."

Earlier in the year, May, during an address in St Peter's Square in Rome, the pope strongly criticised Italy's four mafia organisations for "exploiting and enslaving people", and called on gangsters to repent.

"I think of all the pain of men, women and even children who are exploited by many mafias," Pope Francis told thousands of people during his weekly address.

"They are forced to do work that makes them slaves, like prostitution. Behind all this slavery there are mafias."

Crime-stopper Nicola Gratteri, who for 25 years has lived the south Italy region of Calabria, where the Mafia is most active, lives his life under police protection.

"Those who have up until now profited from the power and wealth deriving from the Church are now nervous, agitated. The Pope is dismantling centres of economic power in the Vatican", he said.

"I don't know if organised crime is in a position to do something, but certainly they are thinking about it. It could be dangerous. If the godfathers can trip him up, they would not hesitate to do so," he told Il Fatto Quotidiano, an Italian daily.

Sources

• The Telegraph
• The Telegraph
• Huffington Post
• The Guardian
• Image: Straight Flesh

The archbishop and Fr Paolo Brogi were returning to Florence in the Archbishop's car when the aggressor reportedly asked to speak with Betori, but the secretary who was also the driver rebuffed him.

In response, the assailant pulled out a 7.65 calibre pistol and fired on the priest, injuring him in the abdomen, before threatening the archbishop with the weapon.

He said something starting with the words "you shouldn't say," but Betori could not make out the end of the sentence, police said.

The gunman tried to fire on Betori but either his gun jammed or he thought better of it, investigators say.

Brogi was injured in the stomach and underwent emergency surgery overnight to repair his small intestine and is out of danger.

Police have started a manhunt for the assailant, thought to be a 70 year old homeless and mentally unstable man. Witnesses say he was unshaven and wearing a wool cap.

Police have stepped up protection for Betori, who said he was "full of pity" for his aggressor.

Sources

• Yahoo News
• Image: Caritas Diocesana di Fienze

Bl. John Paul II's critical stance towards the devaluing of human life, materialism and hedonism in countries of Christian origin made him an "antagonistic figure" both of communist regimes and "misguided" modernizations in democratic countries, Scaraffia explained.

This made him "a dangerous adversary for many."

"Wojtyla well knew who wanted him dead, just as he had always known he was in danger, but he was well aware that behind human decisions, there is always more than meets the eye and he wanted to shift the attention towards this transcendent reality to find the real reason for the event," she said.

"There were multiple forces opposing his open battle to bring Christianity back to the center of attention, to re-open souls to the teaching of the Gospels, and one could not reduce the assassination attempt to a communist political plot or an anti-Christian operation of Islamic fundamentalism."

Scaraffia, a teacher at La Sapienza University in Rome, made her comments in an editorial for the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano 30 years after the assassination attempt.

Continue reading John Paul II saw spiritual meaning behind assassination attempt

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• Image: Rome Reports

The innovative Huffington Post looked at the question by asking a small sampling of American primary grade teachers how they decided to handle the rights or wrongs of his killing with their young charges. It was interesting to read how they attempted to provide information and process class discussions without undue indoctrination or emotion.

President Obama in a somber and non vengeful manner announced that bin Laden's death was the end result of a firefight. This indicated that death rather than capture was the only option. He concluded with the words "… one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America." His demeanour was in contrast to the jubilation and delight of crowds across the United States.

Yet the fact remains that an unarmed man was killed in cold blood rather than captured and tried under the rule of law. Was that the lesser of two evils? Would his capture have resulted in greater retribution and terror than his killing would undoubtedly cause? Mainstream Christian leaders, Catholic and Protestant, have been cautious in their comment. While they have condemned terror and bin Laden's atrocities, I haven't seen one public statement from them that the killing was morally wrong. Was it?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in dealing with the question of crime and punishment under the heading ‘Legitimate Defence', tends to be somewhat nuanced and open to different interpretations. But it states: "If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person." (2267)

St Paul writes "Never try to get revenge; leave that my friends to God's anger. As scripture says: Vengeance is mine - I will pay them back, the Lord promises." (Romans 12:19)

A moral dilemma indeed.

Lyndsay Freer

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