Neocons Target Vatican: Pick-a-Pope for PNAC

Wayne Madsen
Online Journal
April 5, 2005

The dream candidate of the neocons for the next pope is the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn. According to a major neocon media outlet of convenience, The Jerusalem Post, Schoenborn, on a recent visit to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, echoed the Christian Zionist line of George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich, and neocon Catholic and New American centurion Michael Novak. Schoenborn referred to Israel as "God's chosen land" for the Jewish people. Responding to the comments of a clearly pained Palestinian priest, who questioned the cardinal on his support for Israel's usurpation of Palestinian lands and homes, basically said that as a refugee from war time Czechoslovakia he understood the pain of refugees. Commenting further, Schoenborn said that was a matter of international law while the Jews' inheritance of the Holy Land trumped international law because it was prophesized in the Bible and that all Christians should embrace Zionism as the fulfillment of that Biblical prophecy.

Although Pope John Paul II established diplomatic relations with Israel and was the first pope to visit a synagogue, he was also cognizant of the Holy See's responsibility to Catholicism's flocks in Palestine and other Arab lands. For example, he maintained close links to the late Palestinian President Yasir Arafat.

John Paul II was not only strongly opposed to George W. Bush's unprovoked invasion of Iraq but came out vocally against Bush's father's Desert Storm invasion. Speaking to ABC's This Week on April 3, Jim Nicholson said that during his last meeting with the pope in March, before he departed his post as American ambassador to the Vatican to take up the position as secretary of Veterans Affairs, the pope wanted to know where Bush intended to take America in the world with its awesome temporal power. It is no secret that the late pope had no time for Bush and his bellicose and aggressive ways and, according to well-placed journalists for Catholic Italian newspapers whom I spoke to in 2003, the pope commented to some of his closest assistants that what he feared most in Bush was the coming of the Antichrist as prophesized in the Book of Revelation. It was the fear of the arrival of the Antichrist during his priesthood that plagued John Paul II since his earlier years in Poland.

Not waiting for John Paul II's burial, the neocons are already working behind the scenes to ensure that the next pope will be as compliant with their global agenda as Pius XII was with the National Socialists and Fascists. It is up to Catholic leaders like Lustiger and his fellow likeminded Cardinals who believe in John Paul II's views on human rights and global survival to confront the machinations of the neocons and their favored candidates, Schoenbron and Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze.

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