ONE does not associate fun with the ultra-Orthodox in Judaism. Funny hats, funny hairstyles and beards, and perpetually pregnant wives, yes. But fun? No!

Which is rather odd, considering that a key figure in Hasidic Jewish life, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810) “placed great stress on living with faith, simplicity, and joy … He encouraged his followers to clap, sing and dance during or after their prayers,” according to his Wikipedia entry.

The Rabbi is venerated by the ultra-Orthodox, and once a year thousands converge on Uman, in the Ukraine, to visit his grave.

But ultra-Orthodox passengers on an El Al flight to Kiev this weekend showed no signs of joy when screens unfolded on the plane in preparation for the screening of a film. In fact, they were as mad as hell and started “a serious commotion” because they had been told that no films would be shown during the flight, according to Haaretz.com.

When the screens began to unfold the ultra-Orthodox men began going wild. It was a pretty frightening sight. According to witnesses, the men began shouting and physically trying to prevent the movie screens from unfolding.

Haaretz adds:

This is not the first time that El Al is faced with problems with ultra-Orthodox people on board flights to religious sites. In 2002, a flight crew had to prevent an ultra-Orthodox passenger, flying from Israel to Britain, from wrapping himself in plastic bags. The pilot was forced to return to Ben Gurion International airport in order to remove the passenger from the plane. The passenger, a Cohen, wrapped himself in plastic bags for fear that the plane’s route would pass through the air above the Holon cemetery and he would consequently become impure.

Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, the leader of the Lithuanian Haredi community in Israel, published a halakhic ruling in the past stipulating that Cohens mustn’t fly in this plane because they are prohibited from flying over a cemetery. Later, Rabbi Eliashiv found a solution to this issue, ruling that wrapping oneself in thick plastic bags while the plane crossed over the cemetery is permissible.

Anyway, why on earth were these ultra-Orthodox Jews flying El Al?

In 2006 the two Israeli rabbis signed an agreement ordering the religious community to boycott the airline because it had operated on the Sabbath after the company assisted passengers stuck overseas during a strike at Ben-Gurion Airport.

Hat tip to Michael Cohen, who alerted us to this report

IT’S described as a “totalitarian, Mafia-like organisation, which also employs extreme methods to intimidate, harass and silence critics”.

No, not Islam, but something equally potty: Scientology, which is attracting the unwanted attention of a Scottish group calling itself Anonymous.

Earlier this year, Anonymous – as part of a world-wide, 9,000-strong protest against the “Church” of Scientology – picketed the Hubbard Academy of Personal Independence on South Bridge, Edinburgh – and it plans a further protest on April 12.

According to its website, the group is protesting against:

Scientology’s destructive effects on families specifically, and against its terrible practices more generally, as part of an ongoing worldwide struggle to cause the cult to reform or collapse.

It adds:

Anonymous is against the methods of Scientology, specifically amongst the higher levels, which include suppression of freedom speech and ruining anyone who speaks out against the Church by suing, slandering, framing, bankrupting and even committing murder.

Why do Anonymous supporters wear masks?

The reason that we do this is due to Scientology’s Fair Game policy, which states: ‘The homes, property, places and abodes of persons who have been active in attempting to: suppress Scientology or Scientologists are all beyond any protection of Scientology Ethics, unless absolved by later Ethics or an amnesty … this Policy Letter extends to suppressive non-Scientology wives and husbands and parents, or other family members or hostile groups or even close friends.

SP’s may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. They may be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.

What’s an SP? According to Anonymous:

SP stands for Suppressive Person (you may have heard of this from the Tom Cruise videos), which means any person or organisation who speaks out against, or interferes with the profit of Scientology.

Of course a large part of why we wear masks is simply to give us some uniformity and to stand out. Many of our members simply to hide their faces with scarves, sunglasses, etc. Many more still do not hide their faces at all.

FOR the past eleven years the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), representing the 57 Islamic States, has been tightening its grip on the throat of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On March 2008, they finally killed it.

So declares Geneva-based Roy W Brown, head of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, in a statement issued after a crucial UN vote at the end of March.

Said Brown:

With the support of their allies including China, Russia and Cuba (none well-known for their defence of human rights) the Islamic States succeeded in forcing through an amendment to a resolution on Freedom of Expression that has turned the entire concept on its head.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression will now be required to report on the ‘abuse’ of this most cherished freedom by anyone who, for example, dares speak out against Sharia laws that require women to be stoned to death for adultery or young men to be hanged for being gay, or against the marriage of girls as young as nine, as in Iran.

And he points out that:

There has been a seismic shift in the balance of power in the UN system. For over a decade the Islamic States have been flexing their muscles. Yesterday they struck. There can no longer be any pretence that the Human Rights Council can defend human rights.

The moral leadership of the UN system has moved from the States who created the UN in the aftermath of the Second World War, committed to the concepts of equality, individual freedom and the rule of law, to the Islamic States, whose allegiance is to a narrow, medieval worldview defined exclusively in terms of man’s duties towards Allah, and to their fellow-travellers…

The Sri Lankan delegate explained clearly his reasons for supporting the amendment:

… if we regulate certain things ‘minimally’ we may be able to prevent them from being enacted violently on the streets of our towns and cities.

In other words, said Brown:

Don’t exercise your right to freedom of expression because your opponents may become violent. For the first time in the 60 year history of UN Human Rights bodies, a fundamental human right has been limited simply because of the possible violent reaction by the enemies of human rights.

The violence we have seen played out in reaction to the Danish cartoons is thus excused by the Council – it was the cartoonists whose freedom of expression needed to be regulated. And Theo van Gogh can be deemed responsible for his own death.

Freedom of expression is that right which – uniquely – enables us to expose, communicate and condemn abuse of all our other rights. Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press we give the green light to tyranny and make it impossible to expose corruption, incompetence, injustice and oppression.

The wafer-thin sham of an international consensus on the promotion and protection of human rights has finally been exposed for what it was – a sham. The fragmentation of human rights now appears inevitable.

The proposed Islamic Charter on Human Rights (read “Duties towards Allah”) will certainly go ahead, as will the creation of a parallel Islamic Council on Human Rights. But the OIC will nevertheless continue to attend and dominate the UN Human Rights Council, thereby ensuring its continuing emasculation and descent into total irrelevance.

He concluded:

States who are genuinely concerned with human rights should immediately withdraw from the Council until such time as all member states as well as those offering themselves for election agree to honour their pledges, and undertake to expel any member state which, having been put on notice regarding its human rights record, fails to put its house in order within a reasonable timescale.

You can read the full IHEU report here.

THE lunacy that is Islam has now insinuated itself into Britain’s public transport system.

On March 29, The Sun reported that stunned passengers were told to get off a No 81 bus in Langley, near Heathrow, so that the driver, a convert to Islam, could pray.

OK, we know that The Sun’s reporting is often to be taken with a pillar of salt, but in this case there is no doubting the veracity of the report because one of the passengers filmed the driver kneeling on a prayer mat, and chanting whatever gobbledegook Muslims utter when they prostrate themselves before their non-existent Allah.

Footage of the prayer session appeared on The Sun’s website, and was later posted on YouTube.

Said one passenger:

We thought it was a wind-up at first, like Jeremy Beadle.

The 21-year-old plumber added:

He looked English and had a London accent. He looked like a Muslim convert, with a big, bushy beard. Eventually everyone started complaining. One woman said, ‘What the hell are you doing? I’m going to be late for work’.

After a few minutes the driver calmly got up, opened the doors and asked everyone back on board. But they saw a rucksack lying on the floor of the red single-decker and feared he might be a fanatic. So they all refused.

One chap said “I’m not getting on there now”. An elderly couple also looked really confused and worried.

Added the plumber:

After seeing that no-one wanted to get on he drove off and we all waited until the next bus came about 20 minutes later. I was left totally stunned. It made me not want to get on a bus again.

The passenger said he rang the bus firm to complain but claimed it did not believe him. He said:

They asked me, ‘Are you sure?’. Then they said they would get back to me, but they weren’t taking me seriously at all.

The driver, who said his name was Hrun, told The Sun:

I asked everyone to get off because I needed to pray. I was running late and had not had time. I pray five times a day as a Muslim — but I don’t normally ask people to get off the bus to do it.

A spokesperson for bus company London United said:

We are aware of a reported incident involving our route 81. We are currently undertaking a full investigation into the matter.

THE RSPCA unlawfully trespassed on temple property and unlawfully trespassed on the life of a cow.

So declared Gauri Das, president at Bhaktivedanta Manor, Europe’s biggest Hindu temple in Hertfordshire, north of London, when Hindu monks clad in saffron robes this week served legal papers on Britain’s leading animal welfare charity in protest at the slaughter of one of “Mother Gangotri,” a 13-year-old Belgian Blue-Jersey cross.

The animal was put down by the Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals on December 13 last year in what the charity called “a mercy killing”.

Gauri Das added:

The cow was under veterinary care and was recovering. There was absolutely no reason for her to be killed. The way they carried out this act on the sacred premises of a temple with no dialogue was completely unacceptable.

Bhaktivedanta Manor runs the Cow Protection Project, which cares for old cows and bulls, and allows them to die naturally.

According to Worldwide Religious News, the Hindu protest, called Justice for Gangotri, also raised the case of Shambo, a bullock put down at a Hindu community in west Wales last year after a positive test for bovine tuberculosis.
His demise caused outrage among Britain’s 750,000-strong Hindu community – Britain’s third-largest religion after Christianity and Islam – who regard all life as sacred.

The RSPCA denies the claims, saying it informed staff at the temple of what they were going to do, and avoided killing the cow during prayers.

Said John Rolls, RSPCA director of animal welfare promotion.

We believe we acted properly, within the law, but clearly they are of a different opinion. I am sorry it has got to this point. I think the issue could be addressed through dialogue rather than the courts and it is unfortunate they are taking this action.

At the time of Gangroti’s killing, RSPCA spokesperson Julie Stainton said:

It would have been wrong to allow this situation to continue. This animal had been in constant pain and suffering for some time. We know the cow was suffering from painful and infected sores, her limbs had become wasted and her breathing difficult. Three separate vets, including from the Royal College of Vets, from Defra and an independent vet, all agreed that the animal was suffering and should be immediately euthanased.

She added:

We have done everything we can to take account of religious sensitivities and it is sad that we have had to take this action, but the most important thing has been to stop this poor animal from suffering. That is what the RSPCA is for, and what the public would expect us to do.

THE best pictures, they say, are on radio – but the picture painted in a BBC Radio 4 report this evening of a young boy having hot wax poured on his stomach, and being hit in the abdomen before having “holy water” poured on him, is one I wish I could get out of my head.

The child, undergoing an exorcism, was seen being abused by a BBC reporter in one of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s many revivalist and charismatic churches. These churches have become increasingly popular in the Congo as a result of offering magical and miraculous solutions to the misery and insecurity Congolese have faced for decades.

For several years these churches have also hit the headlines for making money by carrying out cruel exorcisms of children they brand as witches, and the streets of Kinshasa are filled with thousands of homeless kids who have been accused of being “possessed”.

Back in 2004 The New Humanist magazine reported:

On almost every street in Kinshasa there are small churches where preachers and pastors say that Satan and witches are the source of all ills. Congo has four main religious groupings: Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, and the Kimbangists, who blend traditional African beliefs with Christian worship. It is mostly the newly emerging Protestant churches and the Kimbangists who advocate belief in witchcraft and identify children as witches.

The magazine also noted the antics of one those directly responsible for the suffering of youngsters – Prophet Onokoko:

Prophet Onokoko is one of many Christian ministers in Kinshasa offering to exorcise children. He prefers to purge children of demons by making them take laxatives and emetics. They are forced to swallow and later regurgitate foreign objects, which Onokoko then displays as proof of demonic possession. He told BBC investigators: “We had a girl here who vomited a large prawn. When it came out she was at peace.” Prophet Onokoko has over 200 children on his books that have either undergone or are awaiting exorcism.

Mahimbo Mdoe, a Save the Children representative in Kinshasa, told the BBC:

[In Onokoko’s church] children are made to vomit up things that have been inserted into them unnaturally. Two eyewitnesses have told us of objects like bars of soap being inserted into the anuses of children. It all shows just how vulnerable children in Kinshasa are if they get thrown out of their families accused of being child witches.

Pastor Tsimba is another exorcist, who, in an interview with the BBC, claims to have carried out over 500 child exorcisms. He can tell they are possessed “by the shape of their eyes”.

But now, according to the BBC, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo is expected to vote shortly for new legislation that will make it a criminal offence to accuse a child of being a witch.

You can access a BBC World Service report on the Congo’s child witches here.

EARLIER this year I expressed my indignation over the suggestion that the famous Pussy Parlure Spiegeltent, due to be set up shortly as part of this year’s Brighton Festival, might have to shorten its name to placate St Peter’s Church leaders. (See Freethinking Aloud here.)

All hell broke loose in February when the parish council got arsy over plans to locate the delightful, burlesque-styled Pussy Parlour on council-owned grounds adjoining this useless old church, and for a while it looked as if the venue would have to locate elsewhere.

In a placatory move, the Pussy Parlour’s owner said he was prepared to drop the word “Pussy”, even though it referred to cats (cats being its motif, as you can see from its website.)

It appears that this grovelling gesture has worked. When I picked up a copy of the Brighton festival guide today, I found that “Pussy” had been expunged, and all acts will now take place in the “Parlure”.

This is outrageous! Yielding to pressure from a church is bad enough, but capitulating to one typified by its profusions of phallic projections and named after a Peter – a popular slang term for penis – is intolerable.

If you really have nothing better to do, you can learn other slang words for the male member at Woody’s World of Penis Euphemisms! Warning: there are hundreds!

WHEN we awoke this sunny Good Friday, we bet ourselves that the Mad March Hares would be getting more than their fair share of media attention during the day.

We weren’t wrong. First to seize a sizeable chunk of the BBC’s coverage was Cardinal Keith O’Brien, head of Scotland’s Catholics, who used his Easter Sunday sermon to criticise the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which will allow scientists to create part human, part-animal embryos for use in stem cell experiments.

Said the cardinal:

This Bill represents a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life. In some European countries one could be jailed for doing what we intend to make legal.

He also said the Bill would lead to the endorsement of experiments of “Frankenstein proportions”. See the Telegraph report here.

His attack comes just days after the Archbishop of Cardiff, the Most Rev Peter Smith, condemned the proposals as “gross interference in human life”.

The Government was also lambasted for lifting the long-standing ban on betting during Easter as part of reforms to the gambling laws.

Churches expressed anger, saying the development reflected a lack of respect for the day when Christians recalled Christ’s crucifixion.

The Church of England warned that it was part of a gradual trend to remove the shared holidays that “help create a rhythm for the nation’s life”.

The Rev Ken Howcroft, the Methodist secretary for conference and communication, said:

While for some gambling is a leisure pursuit, for others it can be immensely addictive and damaging in all aspects of their lives. Ironically, the soldiers who crucified Jesus then gambled for his clothes. But Jesus said, ‘Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing’.

Mike Judge, from the potty right-wing Christian Institute said:

To allow gambling and encourage avarice on Good Friday, when we are remembering the sacrifice Jesus made for the world, is particularly regrettable.

But a spokesman for betting shop chain William Hill said :

We are a commercial organisation, not a religious one. The Government has given us permission to open and we are because our first responsibility is to the 15,000 people who work for us.

Prize for the biggest tosh spouted this Good Friday goes to The Rev Dr Peter Mullen, Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.

In an article in the Telegraph entitled Without Christianity, Our Society is Doomed, he unleashed his second attack on the gay community in as many months, saying:

We might have expected the Church to resist the decay, but instead it has connived with the destructive sexual and social revolution begun in the 1960s. Back then, I voted for homosexuality to be decriminalised. But this meant ‘between consenting adults in private’ - where ‘between’ meant two, ‘adults’ meant men over 21 and ‘private’ meant behind locked doors. I did not foresee the obscene and coercive ‘Gay Pride’ pantomimes that now disfigure our high streets.

Who would have thought we would live to see the Bishop of Hereford fined £47,000 and made to attend a re-education course because he refused to employ a practising homosexual in his diocese’s youth services? How long before I am carted from the pulpit to the nick for preaching that sodomy is not morally equivalent to Christian marriage?

SIR ARTHUR C Clarke, the pioneering British science fiction author and technological visionary best known for the novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey, has died at his home in Sri Lanka, aged 90.

Clarke, who wrote more than 100 books in a career spanning seven decades, died of heart failure linked to the post-polio syndrome that had kept him in a wheelchair for the past 13 years.

According to a report in today’s Guardian, “his forecasts often earned him derision from peers and social commentators. But although his dreams of intergalactic space travel and colonisation of nearby planets were never realised in his lifetime, Clarke’s predictions of a host of technological breakthroughs were uncannily accurate.

“He was one of the first people to suggest the use of satellites for communications, and in the 1940s forecast that man would reach the moon by the year 2000 - an idea that experts at first dismissed as nonsense.”

What the Guardian failed no point out was that Clarke was an avowed atheist.

In his autobiography he said:

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.

He also observed:

Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?

A statement from Sir Arthur’s office said he wanted a private funeral be held in Sri Lanka. According to Lanka Business Online, Sir Arthur also insisted:

Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral.

KURT Westergaard, the 72-year-old cartoonist living under the threat of death from Muslim fanatics, has announced his intention to sell his original bomb-in-a-turban drawing of the Prophet Mohammed.

The most famous of the 12 Motoons, published three years ago by Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper he works for, was described at the weekend by Flemming Rose, cultural editor of the Jyllands-Posten, as “a great cultural icon of the 21st century.”

And he said it was only fair for Westergaard to make money out of it.

According to a report yesterday in the Sunday Times, the small, ink cartoon, currently safely tucked away in a bank vault “could command great interest at auction. Auction houses, however, were voicing doubts about the wisdom of putting such a controversial item on sale.

Said Franck Lombrail, an auctioneer in Paris:

It’s too hot to handle. It would represent a risk for the public at the sale.

But Westergaard’s wife has come up with an interesting solution. She has proposed selling all of the Mohammed cartoons for £50,000 to “a rich Arabian oil sheikh” who could then burn them in Mecca.

The cartoonists would get half of the money. The rest could be donated to needy Muslims.

We at the Freethinker that the price should be upped to £100-million, half going to the cartoonists in reparation for the death threats and insults they have suffered, and the rest to establish clinics in strategic places to help cure people of the devastating mental illness called Islam. There would then be far fewer needy Muslims once they are helped to shake off their medieval delusions and begin engaging far more positively with the real world.

AROUND 50 people in India’s Kottayam region are reported to have been blinded as result of staring into the sun in the hope of glimpsing the Virgin Mary

According to a report in the Telegraph alarmed health authorities in the district were forced set up a sign dispelling rumours of a miraculous image in the sky, and warning of the dangers of looking into direct sunlight.

Despite warnings, believers are still apparently to flocking to a hotelier’s house in Erumeli near where the “divine” image allegedly appeared.

Those blinded as a result of photochemical burns on the retina were treated at St Joseph’s ENT and Eye hospital in the region.

Dr Annamma James Isaac, the hospital’s ophthalmologist said:

All our patients have similar history and symptoms… They have developed photochemical, not thermal, burns after continuously gazing at the sun.

Churches in the area disowned the miracle after health officers and doctors approached the clergy.

The house where the miracle is said to have occurred has apparently been the subject of “miracle” rumours for months.

The hotelier, who has since moved, had claimed that statues of the Virgin Mary in his house been crying honey and bleeding oils and perfumes.

It takes a very special kind of stupid to vandalise a church, then post evidence of your crime on the internet.

But, hey, who ever said that religious folk were intelligent?

Three young Mormon missionaries carried out the attack at the Sangre de Cristo Catholic Church in San Luis, USA, in 2006, but their deed only came to light last week when church members found internet photos showing them vandalising the Shrine of the Mexican Martyrs and mocking the Roman Catholic faith.

A regional missionary official for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Robert Fotheringham, has acknowledged the men depicted in the photos were missionaries working in the San Luis Valley that year, and said the church would discipline the men. He would not, however, identify them.

The damaged statue seen in one of the photos is of Manuel Morales, who was the 28-year-old president of Mexico’s National League for the Defence of Religious Liberty when he was executed in 1926 for refusing to recognise laws he considered anti-religious. He was among more than two dozen Mexican saints canonised in 2000.

The broken-off head had gone unnoticed because it had been placed back on the statue.

The Sangre de Cristo Parish Council, based near the New Mexico line in San Luis, voted on Sunday to ask for an investigation.

Said Alonzo Payne, a lawyer in San Luis who belongs to the parish:

The parish was a victim of a crime, and the council felt we should report it. The local sheriff said charges against the men could include desecration of a venerated object, criminal trespass, defacing property and bias-motivated crime.

Another photo posted on the Photobucket web site, showed a second missionary who appears to be preaching from the Book of Mormon inside the Chapel of All Saints.

A third photo shows one missionary pretending to sacrifice another on the altar at the Shrine of the Mexican Martyrs. All the pictures have now been removed from Photobucket.

The Rev Pat Valdez told parishioners:

What they did was extremely imprudent, extremely uncharitable and inflammatory. You have worked hard and this whole community has worked hard to build that shrine as an expression of our faith and an expression of our love of God.

Fotheringham, who is in charge of the LDS church’s missionary program in parts of four states, and whose region includes the San Luis Valley, said that the three in the pictures were church missionaries, who at the time were serving in the towns of Manassa and Sanford.

Fotheringham met with Valdez and other community members and presented them with a written apology from one of the missionaries, signed by an R Thompson.

I realize that my companions and I have made a mockery of that which is most sacred to many of the residents of San Luis and the rest of the world. I should have known better because I have seen many of the same types of blasphemies made against my own church and I have been appalled.

See a full report here.

THE Roman Catholic church in the United States paid out £306 million in 2007 to victims of sex abuse involving members of the clergy – an increase 54 percent over the previous year, and the largest sum ever paid in a single year

According to a report in Australia’s News.com:

Of the monies paid out by the church, £262 million went to settling cases – almost double the amount paid out in 2006, according to the report commissioned by the church. About £10.6 million was paid out for therapy for victims or support for accused offenders, and £29.5 million for legal fees.

The annual report on the implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People showed that 689 new allegations of abuse were lodged last year – three per cent fewer than in 2006 – but most involved cases dating back decades.

This YouTube video says it all:

A GROUP of Sikhs have been frozen out of an upcoming interfaith meeting with Pope Benedict XVI because of their insistence on wearing ceremonial daggers.

According to Worldwide Religious News, the meeting, scheduled for April 17 at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Centre in the US, originally included Sikhs, as well as Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist guests.

But a guest list released this week by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops substituted followers of another India-based religion — the Jains – in place of the Sikhs.

According to Sikh leaders, at issue was the Secret Service forbidding the wearing of the kirpan, a dagger all Sikhs are required to carry. Sikhs liken its importance to their faith in the same way Orthodox Jewish men are required to wear a yarmulke.

Anahat Kaur, secretary general of the World Sikh Council/America Region near San Francisco, said:

We were pretty disappointed. At an event meant to promote understanding between faiths, we would have had to renounce a fundamental tenet of our faith to attend. The Secret Service had every opportunity to investigate and vet the people coming and see whether we were safe to be there. We thought that would be enough.

Kirpans are only used in self-defense as a last resort. Because kirpans are not allowed on airplanes, many Sikhs will drive instead of fly.

A spokesman for the Secret Service said no weapon, no matter how sanctified its purpose, could be allowed within striking distance of a head of state. Said Eric Zahren:

We have every respect for it as a religious artifact, but it is by definition a weapon, even though it is not the intended use. And we have to answer for the security of the Holy Father while he is here. We have really tried to be accommodating, but this is a pretty standard and basic security measure.

(more…)

THE remaining bits and bobs of Italian saint and alleged out-and-out fraud Padre Pio were removed from his tomb yesterday in preparation for a “public veneration” in April to mark the 40th anniversary of his death.

Italian reports said the exhumation had been carried out in the middle of the night to avoid possible protests and disruptions. The saint’s body had then been taken to a “secret location” to protect it both from protesters trying to retrieve it, and from “unscrupulous relic hunters”.

Capuchin friars at the sanctuary at San Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy, where Padre Pio’s tomb is visited by seven million pilgrims annually, said that “parts of the body” had been found to be “intact”.

Speaking of the dead priest as if he were the mouldering remains of an old Fiat found in a farmer’s barn, Monsignor Domenico D’Ambrosio, Archbishop of Manfredonia, said the Capuchin friar’s body had been exhumed “to check on its state and to carry out all the necessary work to guarantee the best conditions for its conservation.”

According to Worldwide Religious News, the Archbishop added:

The body was in surprisingly good condition. As soon as we got inside the tomb we could clearly make out the beard. The top part of the skull is partly skeletal but the chin is perfect and the rest of the body is well preserved. The knees, hands, mittens and nails are clearly visible … If Padre Pio allows me, I might say he looks as though he just had a manicure.

How delightful that will be for the hordes of ghouls expected to goggle at the remains, which are to be placed in a glass coffin and exhibited for “a number of months”.

The exhumation – the first time the tomb had been opened since Padre Pio’s death in 1968 – was approved by the Vatican despite opposition from some of the saint’s most ardent followers. Padre Pio’s relatives had threatened to take the local archbishop to court if the corpse was exhumed, and a group of devotees had also threatened legal action.

Padre Pio was canonised by the late Pope John Paul II in 2002. His image is displayed in piazzas, homes, shops, garages and vehicles throughout Italy. He is credited with over a thousand miraculous cures, but an Italian historian, Sergio Luzzatto, recently caused controversy with a book on Padre Pio in which he claimed to have found documents in the Vatican archives suggesting that Padre Pio may have faked the stigmata he was famous for, and that he also had “intimate and incorrect relations with women”.