Shortly after the terrorist attack on American, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, declared to the press that the events of September 11, 2001 "do not signal a ‘religious’ war." According to Sodano, the attack has an "ethnic and cultural valance, but not religious ... Certainly in madness, a man can appeal to religious principles, but this is a grave deformation." [Zenit news]

        So, when Muslim fanatics flew jetliners into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon it was only an ethnic and cultural thing, having nothing to do with the religion of Islam. One must ask: Can the Cardinal possibly be serious?

        By September 24, 2001 Osama bin Laden had faxed a statement to the Al-Jazeera television news network, in Qatar. The statement begins as follows: "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful." The terrorist leader then goes on to declare to his "Muslim brothers" in Pakistan that "I received with great sorrow the news of the murder of some of our Muslim brothers in Karachi while they were expressing their opposition to the American crusader forces and their allies on the lands of Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan. We ask Allah to accept them as martyrs and include them with prophets ...We ask Allah to make him victorious over the forces of infidels and tyranny, and to crush the new Christian-Jewish crusade on the land of Pakistan and Afghanistan."

       Nothing religious there!

        In his call to arms against the "Jewish-Christian crusade" Osama bin Laden stands in the long line of Muslim fanatics which began with Mohammed himself. Indeed, Osama bin Laden’s message quotes the advice of "the Prophet" as follows: "The Prophet, Peace Be Upon Him, said: Whoever didn’t fight or prepare a fighter, or take good care of the fighter’s family, Allah will strike him with a catastrophe before Judgment Day." Osama bin Laden concludes by declaring: "We ask Allah to make him victorious over the forces of infidels and tyranny, and to crush the new Christian-Jewish crusade on the land of Pakistan and Afghanistan."

        Oh no, the attack on America has nothing to do with religion. But why would Sodano make such a preposterous claim in the first place? The answer is that under Sodano’s resolutely post-Fatima agenda of a U.N.-brokered world brotherhood of all religions – a notion which he and his collaborators advertise as the "civilization of love" – there can be no such thing as a bad religion. All religions must be seen as good, including Islam. And if any practitioner of Islam commits violence in the name of his religion, well he must be insane. It can’t possibly have anything to do with the teaching of "the Prophet."

        But, of course, the terrorists who killed over 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001 were not insane. They were in fact completely rational true believers – believers in the false religion of Islam, which teaches them that they will be martyrs if they give their own lives to kill Christians.

        Sodano’s interpretation of the terrorist attack is completely in keeping with the entire Vatican diplomatic line that Fatima is finished and that the consecration and conversion of Russia must never be mentioned again. The Vatican line includes Sodano’s ridiculous "interpretation" of the Third Secret under which a vision of the Pope being killed by a band of soldiers (Muslim fighters, perhaps?) outside a ruined city is passed off as John Paul II escaping at the hands of a lone assassin in a perfectly intact St. Peter’s Square back in 1981.

       So, according to the Sodano Interpretation of world events, the message of Fatima came to pass twenty years ago. We need no longer fear Our Lady of Fatima’s warning that "various nations will be annihilated" if Her requests are not honored. In fact, Her requests must no longer be mentioned! No, the terrorist attack was merely the act of a few "insane" people, not a harbinger of far worse things to come.

        And woe to any Catholic who questions the Sodano Interpretation. Is it any wonder that before the dust had even settled on what was once the Twin Towers, Sodano made certain that the priest who does question it most effectively, Father Nicholas Gruner, was condemned without grounds before the entire world?

        The baseless condemnation of Father Gruner immediately after the terrorist attack only proves that from the perspective of the Vatican apparatus the gravest danger the Church faces today is that people might conclude that Father Gruner and the millions of Catholics who share his views are right about Fatima, and that consequently the Vatican’s post-Fatima geopolitical agenda is a monumental failure – which, manifestly, it is.