FINALLY! This spurious lawsuit might enjoin the Vatican to become proactive in opposition to radicalized Islam. With its formidable theologial bench strength, and its virtually-unlimited finacial capabilities, the Vatican's defence potentially could go a long way in putting radicalized Islam on trial in a very public venue.

That said, my guess is that the Church will simply turn the other judicial cheek, and offer some sort of milquetoast statement of faith harmony with this nutter Smith.

(Far better to simply have the Masons knock off the plaintiff ;) ) (it's a joke!)

This is the same "activist" who tried to shut down a 500-year-old church in Bologna because it has a famous mural that depicts Muhammad in hell. This guy really knows how to make Islam popular doesn't he?

Um, aren't the Pope and the Cardinal citizens of Vatican City, and so not beholden to the Italian constitution?

Adel Smith, who is obviously not from Italy either, might want to consult a map of his adopted country's borders.

The sight of the pope kissing the quran was a real sickener when that happened. Maybe they are finally going to wake up. Reports like this;
http://213.92.16.98/ESW_articolo/0,2393,41931,00.html
give me some hope.
Someone needs to get the pope to read Lepanto by GK Chesterton.

Good. Keep on doing that, muslims, and you will probably piss the Italians off.

The other thing that gives me hope is the clumsiness of people like Adel Smith. I wonder if he is really a christian saboteur deep undercover in islam, exposing its intolerance.
On a side note, I work with a lot of Mohommadens and Hindus. Many of the Indian Hindus tell me they are deeply happy that the British ruled India for a while, as otherwise they would still be ruled by the occupying Mughals, and have poor legal status face murders, forced marriages etc.
Us Britishers (for our own selfish reasons obviously) controlled the worst excesses of both main religions. We banned sooti for instance.
One Hindu friend told me the reason for the Hindu practice of sooti (Burning a widow with her dead husband) was primarily so no local moslems could take the widow, force her to marry him and so take her former husbands property.
So that's ok then.
Any hindus on the site, this is only what one guy told me, so I do apologise if there is a better reason to burn widows.
We westerners are terrible for our 'cultural imperialism' aren't

All of this is part of the march to advance Islam, by any means necessary.

The Church may fall under the false church -- the mosque -- for a while, but Christ and His bride, the Church, will prevail.

Another thing, Muslims see Italy as the locus of Christianity's holiest place, the Vatican. Thus, if they are victorious here, it would be the equivalent of having a church built in Mecca and Medina.

The comments by Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger seem quite harmless when the Qura'n calls Jews "monkeys and pigs," calls for the killing of Infidels (that includes me because I believe in the Trinity and commit the sin of Shirk supposedly), and relegate the "People of the Book" to second-class standing as a dhimmitude in the Sharia.

Maybe someone should sue Al-Azhar University in Cairo Egypt or the House of Saud since they are the keepers of the Islam's two holiest sites for these aforementioned positions in Islam.

Kiss the Koran? Does he mean that the Koran is equivalent to the Bible? What a triumph for Islam! Pope Dhimmi needs a Bible study group.

To Peter:

This is what I read somewhere about suttee (or however you spell it!): when the Muslims slaughtered their infidel husbands they would rape the widows. The widows committed suicide to avoid this but the Muslims used to rape their dead bodies anyway. So they started throwing themselves on the funeral pyre.