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Pope Benedict prays, talks to survivors, at Ground Zero (Roundup)
Apr 20, 2008, 16:33 GMT
Pope Benedict XVI meets a representaive of the victims during his visit to Ground Zero, the site of the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York, USA, 20 April 2008. The Pope met with survivors and relatives of victims of the World Trade Center attacks as well as first responders at the site of the 11 September 2001 attacks. EPA/PIER PAOLO CITO / POOL
New York - Pope Benedict XVI Sunday prayed at Ground Zero with survivors of the 2001 terrorist attacks that took 3,000 lives, and asked for God's intercession in the hate which drove the Islamist hijackers to kill so many.
Dressed in a plain white robe, Benedict knelt at a small altar on a yellow carpet at Ground Zero and prayed silently for several minutes before lighting a single candle.
The brief ceremony came on the pontiff's sixth and last day in the United States, where his quest for reconciliation over the child sex abuse scandals within the church have dominated his sojourn.
He is to depart for Rome Sunday evening after holding Mass for tens of thousands at storied Yankee stadium.
About two dozen family members of those who died and actual survivors of the attack by two hijacked passenger planes that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center were on hand for the subdued ceremony.
Benedict struggled to light the candle in the misty, windy weather, then offered a spoken prayer asking for God's support for 'people of many different faiths and traditions' who gathered at the 'scene of incredible violence and pain.'
He asked for God to 'give eternal light and peace to all who died here' and at two other attack sites - the Pentagon in Washington DC and the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where a fourth plane crashed when a handful of passengers struggled to regain control.
The pontiff also appealed to God for peace and understanding around the world.
'Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred,' he prayed.
He also asked that 'those whose lives were spared may live so that the lives lost here may not have been in vain.'
Afterwards, the pope greeted personally each of the family members or survivors as he listened to their connections to the tragedy related by a priest standing next to him.
Some of them were police, fire and rescue officials, reflecting the hundreds of public safety officials who died trying to rescue victims of the attacks in the short time before the towers came tumbling down.
Many of those he greeted knelt and kissed Benedict's hand.
But there was also a certain light-heartedness about the occasion, coming more than six years after the attacks. Before Benedict arrived, people chatted and laughed., and there was banter and smiles as the pope talked to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Governor David Paterson.
The group was kept small to fit the space confines of what is now a building site for the new Freedom Tower. A solemn single cellist provided music, and as the pope left the site, a bagpipe band of the public safety organizations played as he left - symbolic of the heavy Irish Catholic influence in New York's public safety organizations.
Benedict, 81, has kept a rigorous schedule. He has spoken publicly nearly every day of the sex abuse victims' pain and shortcomings of a church which failed to stop the worldwide plague, and met Thursday with a group of US victims - a first for the Vatican.
In the US alone, more than 4,000 priests have abused more than 10,000 children over five decades, according to the 2004 report documented by criminal justice experts at the behest of the US bishops' organization.
The Vatican is considering changes in canon law to deal with the cases, apparently in the church's statute of limitations, which now dictate that victims file complaints within 10 years after turning 18 years old, according to news reports over the weekend.
The possibility came forth in remarks by Cardinal William J Levada, who heads the Vatican office that rules on cases of sexual abuse forwarded from bishops from around the world.
In the US, many of those seeking resolution and compensation are in their 50s and 60s, having spent a lifetime building courage to come forth with painful memories from childhood or early teenage years.
Abuse cases have been reported from at least a dozen other countries, but the Vatican is particularly concerned about the effect on the US church, its third-largest flock with 70 million members and a branch that has always shown an independent streak.
Victims' groups want the Vatican to also take measures against the bishops who were often silent partners in the abuse.
The German-born pope, seen as more of a bookworm and less charismatic than his predecessor John Paul, nonetheless has struck a strong emotional chord in the United States, where he also made only the third visit ever by a modern pope to a Jewish synagogue.
During his brief visit Friday night at the Park East Synagogue in New York on the eve of the sacred Jewish celebration of Passover, Benedict, who was drafted at age 14 into the Nazi Youth Movement in 1941, met with Rabbi Arthur Schneier, 78, who outlived the Holocaust in the Budapest ghetto.
Benedict recalled the war days in remarks Saturday night to 20,000 student seminarians at St Joseph's Seminary in New York, where he urged young people to keep the faith while enjoying their freedom.
'My own years as a teenager were marred by a sinister regime that thought it had all the answers,' Benedict said. 'Its influence grew - infiltrating schools and civic bodies, as well as politics and even religion - before it was fully recognized for the monster it was.'
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Older Talkback
page: 1
I agree with you, Lance, but the US is still fighting the wild west, civil war, WW2, Vietnam and every other comflict. Just turn on your television. It's all there. It is as if they don't want to forget, as if war is all they know, and are continuing to indoctrinate their children with violence. A very sad, sick society.
It is abig mistake to call it ''Islamic Extremists'' Islam does not teach nor does condone exterism. BUT THERE ARE FEW QUESTIONS!!
[1] WHAT WERE THE BIN lADENS DOING AT BUSH'S RANCH?
[2] How did they go to saudie arabia while the all the air trafic was suspended?
[3] What were the names of pilots flying those planes?
[4] What were the names of passengers in the planes?
[5] If Terry Waite could be spotted in Lebanon in 1980s, why these Taliban killers and terrorists are not spotted and killed right there?
[6] Why the whole in Pentagon was 16 ft diameter and not the size of plain that hit it?
[7] Why so few planes were left to protect our airspace and others deputed in all different locations?
[8] If a world power attacked us with atom bombs. what would be our defence?
[9] Why the building that was supposed to stand the collision with a plain did not withstand it?
AND SO ON, ALL THESE QUESTIONS MUST BE ANSWERED BY US ADMINISTRATION.
Being a Muslim means never having to say you are sorry evidentially.
'it was done by us trained extremists'
Then you should get out of a country that would do such a thing.
'It is abig[sic] mistake to call it ''Islamic Extremists'' Islam does not teach nor does condone exterism[sic]. '
That is a lie. I can run down HUNDREDS of verses from the Koran that teach you to hate everyone other then your particular sect but these are just a few:
Allah is an enemy to unbelievers. - Sura 2:98
On unbelievers is the curse of Allah. - Sura 2:161
Slay them wherever ye find them and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. - 2:191
Fight against them until idolatry is no more and Allah's religion reigns supreme. (different translation: ) Fight them until there is no persecution and the religion is God's entirely. - Sura 2:193 and 8:39
You must not think that those who were slain in the cause of Allah are dead. They are alive, and well-provided for by their Lord. - Surah 3:169-71
Fight those who believe neither in God nor the Last Day, nor what has been forbidden by God and his messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, even if they are People of the Book, until they pay the tribute and have been humbled. - 9:29 (another source: ) The unbelievers are impure and their abode is hell. (another source: ) Humiliate the non-Muslims to such an extent that they surrender and pay tribute.
O Prophet! Make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites. Be harsh with them. Their ultimate abode is hell, a hapless journey's end. - 9:73
When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then when you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds, then set them free, either by grace or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens. - 47:4
(different translation: ) When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads, and when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly.
On and on and on it goes like this.. Your 'holy book' is hate speach.
'BUT THERE ARE FEW QUESTIONS!!'
A few insaine questions...
Here is a question for you, if this is just the Americans training a few 'extremists' to attack ourselves for some reason only a mental case like you can seee why has there been islamist murder in: India and the Sudan and Algeria and Afghanistan and New York and Pakistan and Israel and Russia and Chechnya and the Philippines and Indonesia and Nigeria and England and Thailand and Spain and Egypt and Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia and Ingushetia and Dagestan and Turkey and Kabardino-Balkaria and Morocco and Yemen and Lebanon and France and Uzbekistan and Gaza and Tunisia and Kosovo and Bosnia and Mauritania and Kenya and Eritrea and Syria and Somalia and California and Argentina and Kuwait and Virginia and Ethiopia and Iran and Jordan and United Arab Emirates and Louisiana and Texas and Tanzania and Germany and Australia and Pennsylvania and Belgium and Denmark and East Timor and Qatar and Maryland and Tajikistan and the Netherlands and Scotland and Chad and Canada and China and Nepal and the Maldives and...
As of this morning there were 10951 deadly attacks committed by islamists all over the world with hundreds of thousands of people killed since 9/11… But it is everyone else’s fault, eh? Everyone elses..
Have a look:
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3369102968312745410
If you take some verses without context, you can manipulate even worse than Wielder.
GO FOR THE REFERENCES ALONG WITH. HOWEVER READ BIBLE IN GENESIS SEE COPY;
www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201:1-21;&version=31;31;49 ;45
Is god really that ignorant that he did not know what light is. Was the sun first plannet in our solar system or the earth? Is rest of the universe older than our earth? Did the biblical god know about the needs oof man? Did he know that to have children you need both sexes, or was the man to produce newer genaration through blond monkeys or black gorillas?
WHAT KIND OF GOD DO THE CHRISTIANS WORSHIP?
'Wielder is real Christian, who can lie thru teeth'
There is no Christian version of 'Taqiyya' the Islamic Principle of Lying for the Sake of 'Allah'. That's right, in islam it is ok to lie:
'It has been quite an effort to prevent Infidels from getting the wrong (that is to say, the right) impression of Islam, at least until such time as Muslims in the West currently singing the praises of “pluralism” no longer have need for Infidel good will and tolerance. To date, the twin techniques of “Taqiyya” and Tu-Quoque have been relied on. “Taqiyya” is the religiously-sanctioned doctrine, with its origins in Shi’a Islam but now practiced by non-Shi’a as well, of deliberate dissimulation about religious matters that may be undertaken to protect Islam, and the Believers.'
www.jihadwatch.org/archives/004628.php
So take EVERYTHING the nitwit above writes with a big grain of salt because it believes that it is OK to tell the most ludicrous lies to protect islam it can think of. (As if that weren't obvious.)
'If you take some verses without context, you can manipulate even worse than Wielder.'
What context makes that OK? Regardless, I have read the Koran, that pretty much IS the context.
'Is god really that ignorant that he did not know what light is. '
Don't know, don't care.
'WHAT KIND OF GOD DO THE CHRISTIANS WORSHIP?'
The one that doesn't tell us to fly aircraft full of people in to buildings full of people.
page: 1
lanceApr 20th, 2008 - 18:21:05
It is way past time to move on. 9/11 happened a long time ago and people should not bring it up over and over again in order to justify attacking Iraq and other people.
Yes, it was accomplished by Islamic extremist, just as the invasion of Iraq and subsequent mass killing of muslims that resisted the invasion was accomplished by christians.
But, we must all move on and not use those ill-conceived events as a lightning rod for one's faith and values.
Good to hear that New Yorkers are happy again.
I hope the pope also asked for God's intercession in the hate which drove the christian leaders to kill so many in Iraq. He does sound very biased though.
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