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Europe
Italian gift to Pope may renew Muslim ire
2006-10-23
Oriana Fallaci, the controversial Italian journalist, who left her books and papers to a Rome university because of her admiration for Pope Benedict XVI, may have lent further strength to Muslim suspicions about the Pope’s perceived Islamophobia. In her last days, Fallaci, who became a bitter foe of Islam, which she saw as a destructive force at war with the West and its values, had a private audience with Benedict at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. In one of her final interviews, Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal, “I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true.”

A report in Boston Globe on Sunday said that Benedict was surprised by the gift of the books, which dated back as far as the 17th century. “The veneration that she had for you, Holy Father, persuaded her to make this donation, which will be known as the Oriana Fallaci Archives,” Monsignor Rino Fisichella, rector of the Pontifical Lateranense University in Rome said during a ceremony at the university announcing the gift of the books.

Pope Benedict greeted FallaciÂ’s nephew and his family during the ceremony, according to the Italian news agency ANSA. After an absence from the publishing scene for nearly a decade, Fallaci returned to the spotlight after the 9/11 attacks with a series of blistering essays in which she argued that Muslims were carrying out a war against the Christian West. At the time of her death, she was on trial in northern Italy, accused of defaming Islam in her 2004 book, The Strength of Reason.
Posted by:Fred

#12  You're welcome, tw. She was something marvelous.

Unlike Gunther Grass.
Posted by: mrp   2006-10-23 23:37  

#11  Thank you, mrp. The lady could write!
Posted by: trailing wife   2006-10-23 23:17  

#10  The Center For The Study Of Popular Culture conferred upon Oriana Fallaci the "Annie Taylor Award" on November 28, 2005. Her acceptance speech was published as a postscript in her book The Force Of Reason .

Here is an appropriate excerpt:

But there is something even worse. Because last August I was received in private audience by Ratzinger. I mean by Pope Benedict XVI. A Pope who loves my work since he read Letter to a Child Never Born and whom I deeply respect since I read his intelligent books. Moreover, with whom I happen to agree in many occasions. For example, when he writes that the West has developed a sort of hatred towards itself. That it no longer loves itself, that it has lost its spirituality and risks to lose its identity too. Exactly what I write when I write that the West is sick with a moral and intellectual cancer. In fact I often observe: "If a Pope and an atheist say the same thing, in that thing there must be something tremendously true".

New parenthesis: I am an atheist, yes. A Christian atheist, as I always point out, but an atheist. And Pope Ratzinger knows it very well. In The Force Of Reason , I dedicate a whole chapter to explaining the apparent paradox of such self-definition. Yet do you know what he says to atheists like me? He says: "Okay, (the okay is mine, of course), then Veluti si Deus daretur. Behave as if God existed". Words from which one assumes that in the religious community there are more open-minded and smarter people than in the secular one I belong to. So open-minded and so smart that they don't even try, not even dream, to save my sourl. (I mean, to convert me). This is also why I state that, in selling itself to theocratic Islam, laicism (you say secularism) has missed the most important appointment offered to it by History. And in doing so it has opened a void, an abyss, that only spirituality can fill. It is also why in the Church of today I see an unexpected partner, an unexpected ally. In Ratzinger, and in any pious man who accepts my disquieting independence of thought and behaviour, a real compagnon-de-route. Unless, of course, the Church too misses its appointment with History. Something I don't foresee, though. And I don't because, in reaction to the materialistic ideologies which have characterized the century we have just left, the century ahead seems to me marked by an inevitable nostalgia or irresistible need of religiousness.
Posted by: mrp   2006-10-23 22:22  

#9  waking Europe to the Islamic threat might qualify as a miracle...
Posted by: Frank G   2006-10-23 21:21  

#8  Canonization requires (in part) two miracles.

I guess if Oriana appeared in a vision (1) and exclaimed "Sonovabitch, it's true! Everything!" (2), those might be sufficient :)
Posted by: mrp   2006-10-23 20:53  

#7  Yeah, but imagine the seething when they make her a Saint.
Posted by: DMFD   2006-10-23 19:47  

#6  They're still pissed that she tywitted that idiot Khomeni.
Posted by: mojo   2006-10-23 14:46  

#5  Was she really an atheist at the end?

Ratzi had to give her a blessing. Maybe some small comfort to her? A sense of peace?
Posted by: anonymous2u   2006-10-23 13:05  

#4  Fisichella

It's gonna be a long day ..
Posted by: mrp   2006-10-23 09:25  

#3   I believe that comment was made by her nephew.

Dang. I double-checked the Reuters article and it was Frischella who made the quote. Which, of course, makes the Vatican's acceptance even more impressive.
Posted by: mrp   2006-10-23 09:24  

#2   “The veneration that she had for you, Holy Father, persuaded her to make this donation, which will be known as the Oriana Fallaci Archives,” Monsignor Rino Fisichella, rector of the Pontifical Lateranense University in Rome said ...

I believe that comment was made by her nephew.

I smile when I recall that Gunther Glass and Josef Ratzinger rolled dice in the same POW cage at the end of WWII.
Posted by: mrp   2006-10-23 09:04  

#1  Oriana Fallaci, the controversial Italian journalist, who left her books and papers to a Rome university because of her admiration for Pope Benedict XVI, may have lent further strength to Muslim suspicions about the PopeÂ’s perceived Islamophobia. In her last days, Fallaci, who became a bitter foe of Islam, which she saw as a destructive force at war with the West and its values, had a private audience with Benedict at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. In one of her final interviews, Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal, “I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true.”

As a scientific agnostic, all I can say is; "More power to you Girl/Pope Benedict/or anybody else who has the ovaries/stones/whatever to call Islam on the carpet."
Posted by: Zenster   2006-10-23 01:49  

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