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Article: Missing from the pope.(on the right)(Pope Benedict XVI)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- October 23, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 19
THE talk over the weekend concerning the pope's blunder had to do with his under-instruction in diplomacy. Several matters were cited, among them that he had, for lack of intelligent concern, dispatched his principal Arabist to Cairo on a trivial diplomatic mission. The assumption is that if His Holiness had had his ship in order, somebody would have told him that the little paragraph about Islam in his forthcoming speech at the University of Regensburg would bring on a major diplomatic foofaraw.
This dark view of things seemed to be validated by the headlines on Monday, which spoke of an unprecedented "apology" by Pope Benedict ...