Well... With a Side-by-Side Comparison, Who Can Argue?
Posted by Thinking In Vain at 10/16/2007 08:56:00 AM
Is this Pope John Paul II waving from beyond the grave? Vatican TV director says yes
By NICK PISA - More by this author »
Last updated at 21:21pm on 15th October 2007
This fiery figure is being hailed as Pope John Paul II making an appearance beyond the grave.
The image, said by believers to show the Holy Father with his right hand raised in blessing, was spotted during a ceremony in Poland to mark the second anniversary of his death.
Details appeared on the Vatican News Service, a TV station in Rome which specialises in religious news broadcasts.
Service director Jarek Cielecki, a Polish priest and close friend of John Paul II, travelled to Poland after hearing an onlooker had photographed the image.
Father Cielecki said he was convinced the picture showed the former pontiff.
"You can see the image of a person in the flames and I think it is the servant of God, Pope John Paul II," he said.
The pictures were being broadcast continuously on Italian TV and also posted on religious websites, some of which crashed as thousands logged on to see for themselves the eerie figure formed by the flames.
The bonfire was lit during a service at Beskid Zywiecki, close to John Paul's birthplace at Katowice, southern Poland, on April 2 - the second anniversary of his death.
Hundreds had attended the ceremony. Gregorz Lukasik, the Polish man who took the photographs, said: "It was only afterwards when I got home and looked at the pictures that I realised I had something.
"I showed them to my brother and sister and they, like me, were convinced the flames had formed the image of Pope John Paul II.
"I was so happy with the picture that I showed it to our local bishop who said that Pope John Paul had made many pilgrimages during his life and he was still making them in death."
via The Daily Mail
He cuts a slightly trimmer figure, so maybe it's easier to stay fit in the hereafter. I usually don't associate flames with a papal afterlife, but maybe it's time to move past unfair fire stereotypes.
How come nobody ever sees a vision of a protestant? I look forward to the day an image of John Wesley appears on my toast.
Agree with flummox - why is the Pope burning? And what a bummer that he's still got the hunched over look from his earthly days. I like to believe that in Heaven maybe we get freed from all the sicknesses and whatnot that bind us here on earth. Or could it be that he maybe didn't go where...I shut up now before I offend some Catholics.
Well he's obviously got to appear to us in a way that we'll recognise him - i.e. hunched over. If he was all straight-backed and doing a jig, who'd know he was the old Pope, and not just some random Saint?
I'm particularly on the lookout for Martin Luther in my pancakes.
Nice point Will. ;)