POPES HAVE DONE A LOT OF SHITE THINGS IN THE PAST.
The "CRUSADES" were VERY, VERY, VERY, s t u p i d, then the "borgias" ran the entire catholic church as a RACKET when they were popes - but ANY organisation can get "stolen" for a time - distortions, misrepresentations, misuse - sometimes due to the very fact that something worth respect was what got stolen. If a "WICCA" ORGANISATION existed that had power these days SOMEBODY might try to misrepresent it (even further) as all about wick-ed (geddit!) things - rather than "wicc, as in , say camber-wick - ie- old spirits of communities, old townspeople, etc - but then again, if lichtenstein had the biggest taxpayer base or the biggest armed forces in the world, we'd all get told we were showing classic signs of lichtenstein-o-phobia if we criticised the "war of errorism" or its profits.
But - THIS pope-bloke - AINT THAT BORGIA - despite the grauniads "the omen" picture, even WITH all the things he said in the past - ( he came out for progress at vatican 2 in the sixties, then it seems he was a bit "got at" in a reactionary way - BUT if you look at what his ACTUAL words are these days - under the "imp atient for aggro" graffitist mass-meja spin, he's discovering a different sort of progress again, if you listen.)

The interesting thing IS - WHY are some of his words getting taken SO very out of even the SENTENCES they are in. ( He's come out AGAINST the crusades - in strength - he's opposed the war in iraq - etc, etc, etc, etc, - the rest of the sentence was the bloke dissing ALL violent "conversions by conquest" - but the most useful, different bit of what he said was about science, unfreezing "books" (The Books) to re-open a "cordoba" situation - when, under a muslim government, as it happens, allsorts of people researched all sorts of past thinkers to reassess the present, the future, etc.
(for a"doctrine"-type - that means LOT )
It was also a challenge to "secularism" to discover humanism again.
. . . .

LINK TO FULL SPEECH IN TOMORROWS "COMMENTS" WHEN TRANSLATION IS OUT,- (A superb mistranslation was around yesterday!)
- at present you can get "key excerpts" - with odd bits missing(!) at the usual places -

but as a taster,- to "ungargoyle" the bloke, as aprelude to doing a BIT to ungarble him, this is what he ACTUALLY said as he spoke to several thousand priest-types during the last day of his bavarian trip - as the MSNBC network covered it -

"i brought a long sermon, but i wont give it, you can get it in print later" he told the clergy gathered in the cathedral at freising, to a burst of applause.

other comment follows with text-links.
see also 2 other newswire pieces + "comments".
cheers