John Paul's Secretary Recalls 'Escapes'

[DoYouEverWonder]

January 27, 2007

WARSAW, Poland -- The late Pope John Paul II slipped away from his Swiss Guards to go skiing more than 100 times in the early years of his 26-year papacy, the pontiff's longtime personal secretary says in a book released on Saturday.

It was hard at first for John Paul, an avid sportsman, to adjust to the confinement of the papacy, so he made informal "escapes" with his closest friends -- three other Polish prelates, says Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz in his book, titled "Swiadectwo" or "The Testimony."

John Paul made his first such outing two years into his papacy, on Jan. 2, 1981, setting out from the papal vacation residence at Castel Gandolfo in the car of the Rev. Jozef Kowalczyk.

Kowalczyk, now papal nuncio to Poland, was driving; next to him was Rev. Tadeusz Rakoczy, "with a newspaper spread out pretending he was reading in order to 'hide' the Holy Father who was sitting in the back seat," Dziwisz wrote. After the trip, the beaming pope exclaimed: "We did it!"

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-poland-skiing-pope,0,3444051.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines


First we had the flying nun, now we have the skiing pope.

[YellingTuna]

1. lol - I can picture the whole thing. Car ride and all.

RIP - peace be with you.

[alfredo]

3. I can see them drinking Vodka and smoking bud.

Laughing their heads off, mooning little ole ladies, pissing behind bushes, making crank calls to the Eastern Orthodox Church in Bulgaria.

Why not?

[calimary]

4. Hey! Welcome to DU!

It's a fun thought, isn't it? If I were holed up like that, I'd want to sneak out, too. From what I've read, Princess Di did it fairly often, also.

[AngryOldDem]

7. He was perhaps the most vibrant and physically healthy man....

...ever to hold the papacy. His athleticism was well known. His decline really began with the shooting in 1981.

[razors edge]

2. How will Bernie Rats

make it to the skin head meet-ups now that the back door has been exposed?

[ScottGregory]

5. NO VALUE to this subject>Italy should terminate the Vatican...

The Vatican has only been recognized as a "sovereign" state since the Concordat with the Mussolini government, I believe in 1922, or 1927...something like that...The new progressive government of Italy should overturn that agreement with the Italian fascist dictator and take over the Vatican and establish it as a national historical monument...allowing the Church of Rome to continue to hold mass in St. Peters...but ending any special status ....and above all, auditing those Vatican books...too many dead people over how those funds have been handled over the years. Particularly with the infamous John Paul II, who laundered church funds to the poles to help them against the USSR...and subsequently the Vatican bank supervisor was found hanging underneath a bridge in London....JP II was a criminal politician, not a religious leader...Italy needs to end this once and for all.

[MaryBear]

6. Whoa!

Passionate post. Welcome to DU. Can you please cite your sources?

[ScottGregory]

9. so cited: Roberto Calvi's body was found hanging under London's Blackfriars Bridge

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=aA6WoamkuCHc&refer=europe

This was tied thru various souces to the delivery of funds to Solidarity in Poland....

Calvi Trial to Expose `Dark' Side of Italian History (Update2)
Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Twenty-three years after Roberto Calvi's body was found hanging under London's Blackfriars Bridge, five people charged with the murder of the man dubbed ``God's Banker'' are on trial in Rome.

Prosecutors Luca Tescaroli and Maria Monteleone have charged jailed mobster Giuseppe ``Pippo'' Calo, Ernesto Diotallevi and three others with murder. The trial opened in a courthouse bunker on the outskirts of Rome today. A 1982 inquest in the U.K. ruled Calvi took his own life, while a second inquiry a year later failed to establish whether it was murder or suicide.

``A dark and unsettling chapter of Italian and British history will be revealed during the trial,'' said Tescaroli, the lead prosecutor in the case, in an interview Nov. 4 in his Rome office. ``It was a big mistake to say that he committed suicide. We found evidence that proves that Calvi was murdered.''

Calvi, who earned his nickname working with the Vatican, was the chairman and chief executive officer of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's largest private bank before its collapse after he died in 1982. He was 62. Prosecutors say they will show that Ambrosiano helped unidentified individuals launder money and was at the center of a web that included the Mafia, the drugs trade, and the Vatican.

[Amused Musings]

10. Well,

I cannot really fault him over helping the Poles and Solidarity against the Soviets. I, for one, am against any totalitarianism.

[AzDar]

8. I gots no love for the Church, but I certainly admired Karol. He emanated

kindness and intelligence, imnsho. Pope Ratz, on the other hand...