Stasi spied on 'critical' Pope for two decades

Stasi spied on 'critical' Pope for two decades

Luke Harding in Berlin
Monday October 3, 2005
The Guardian


East Germany's secret police, the Stasi, spied on Pope Benedict XVI for more than two decades, regarding him as one of the "sharpest critics of communism", the German newspaper, Bild am Sonntag, reported yesterday.

It published excerpts of files showing that communist agents had closely monitored the former German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 1974. His close friendship with the late Polish Pope John Paul II was regarded by the Stasi as being particularly dangerous. It cited their support for "revolutionary developments" taking place in Poland.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,12272,1583578,00.html

Why Stasi spied on future Pope
By Roger Boyes in Berlin
At least eight Cold War agents trailed anti-communist Cardinal Ratzinger



AT LEAST eight East German communist agents were ordered to report on the private life and political views of the future Pope Benedict XVI during the Cold War years, according to his secret police files published in Berlin yesterday.

The release of the Stasi documents came at a particularly poignant moment for the Pope as he opens in Rome his first Bishops’ Synod since his elevation to the papacy last April. One of the themes of the synod is the boundary between Church and State.

----------------


It was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s deep anti-communism and his profound suspicion of atheist states that made him a target of the East German Stasi. Their suspicions seem to be confirmed by his long friendship with Karol Wojtyla, the Polish cardinal and future Pope John Paul II.

In a dense dossier of reports which spanned two decades, Stasi agents noted that Cardinal Ratzinger had been emotionally shocked by the left-wing student rebels who disrupted his theology lectures at the University of Tübingen in the 1960s. The experience had turned him from a church reformer into “the leading conservative theologian”, one Stasi analysis said, noting his opposition to left-leaning priests in Central America.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-1808708,00.html

Both Ratzinger and Pinochet were recipients of considerable $$$$$$$ stolen funds laundered by the Polish Fascist Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe) after the assasination of JFK in November 1993 via London and Santiago. Members of the Duarte family in the UK were eventually charged in the UK with theft of some $250,000 from a US child trust fund that ended up in Opus Dei accounts of former suspected Nazis who were quizzed re their Castro-affiliations after the Cuban missiles debacle.

Some of this eidence was heard in the UK High Court in the corruption scandal which saw ex-UK War Minister indicted in a racket involving call girl Mandy Rice Davis.

We certainly could expect that a high-profile archbishop in Germany would be the target of Stasi. There is nothing surprising there.

subsequent elevation of both JP2 and Ratzinger.

Stasi ensured that no hitches would occur.

That is a huge shock! I am so surprised!