Another Priest Banned, Shots Fired

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        On and on the "conversion of Russia" goes. On September 9, 2002, AP reported that yet another Roman Catholic priest is in the process of being expelled from Russia: "A Roman Catholic priest was detained at an airport in the Russian Far East upon arrival from Japan, a duty officer at the Vatican’s embassy in Moscow said Monday." The priest, Jaroslaw Wisniewski, a Polish national, was stopped at the airport in Khabarovsk, in Russia's Far East.

        As AP notes, "the detention comes amid tension over the activities of the Roman Catholic Church in predominantly Orthodox Russia. The Russian Orthodox Church complains that Roman Catholics are poaching converts from among people who traditionally would have been Orthodox adherents…. In recent months, at least three Catholic priests have been forced to leave Russia when their visas were not renewed."

        Then, of course, there is the expulsion of Bishop Jerzy Mazur, the bishop for all of Siberia, where the vast majority of Russian Catholics still reside.

        And now the violence begins. AP further reports that "in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don gunmen opened fire on a Catholic church…. Rostov police spokeswoman Olga Kakutkina said unknown gunmen fired on the church early Saturday when nobody was inside. Later in the morning, the church's staff discovered 10 bullet holes in the windows, she said."

        Unknown gunmen, eh? Well, according to AP parish spokesmen said "they did not believe the incident was anti-Catholic, but rather simple hooliganism. They said the church had not received any threats." Ah yes, simple hooliganism. Just a bunch of armed Russian men who decided to shoot up the local Catholic church to blow off a little steam after a hard day at the local boiler factory: "Hey, Yvgeny, vot do you vant to do tonight?" "I don’t know, Igor." "How about shooting up the local Catholic church?" "Great idea, Igor!" "Let’s go get Ivan and Vladimir!"

        And these men could not possibly have any connection to the regime of the Practicing Christian, Vladimir Putin, because, as we all know, the ascendancy of Putin is just another part of the miracle of Russia’s transformation from a Soviet-style dictatorship to… a Soviet-style authoritarian regime!

        Let’s face it: the dupes of Fatima revisionism are never going to admit they are wrong. They’ll simply forget that Fatima ever happened. But we're not going to forget here at Fatima.org. Keep coming back, dear reader. Things are going to get very interesting in the very near future - if, God willing, we live to see it.