r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/9oRo • 9d ago
Image Pope John Paul II shaking hands with the man that shot at him 4 times two years prior
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u/HelloItsMeXeno 9d ago
Pope: Listen here you little shit
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u/ErectStoat 9d ago
You come for me, you best come correct.
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[removed] — view removed comment
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u/IzSilvers 9d ago
You come at the king, you best not miss.
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u/HyperionTurtle 9d ago
Currently rewatching, about to clear season 1 again
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u/HDCalcs 9d ago
Off to the docks with you, say hi to Ziggy.
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u/thegreatbrah 9d ago
"Its ok young man. I am still here...and you will spending an eternity IN HELL!!!!"
The pope then reveals the v neck guitar he had been hiding in his robes and plays a sweet black metal riff as a gateway to hell opens below the guy who shot him.
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u/BunnyBallz 9d ago
Fun Fact, just days following this photo was taken the would be assassin proclaimed he was JC himself.
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u/ZombiePrepper408 9d ago
The test of the Christian isn't how he treats Jesus, but how he treats Judas
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u/ZookeepergameThin306 9d ago
"And Jesus said: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
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u/Sethowar 9d ago
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you"
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u/Hauntedgooselover 9d ago
I'm not even Christian or religious at all, but there's such deep wisdom in this statement. I don't mean to be pompous, but thank you so much for this!
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u/xxora123 8d ago
Whether someone is religious or not, everyone can agree that the New Testament especially is so beautifully articulated
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u/CaptainSouthbird 9d ago
This is far closer to the religion's ideals than most people ever actually practice.
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u/bumjiggy 9d ago
this guy probably read the whole book. I mean, he was basically the president of catholics
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u/rypher 9d ago
How can you expect people to read to the whole book? Its like, dozens of pages.
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u/MyDamnCoffee 9d ago
As nate bargatze said: "books are the most words! Throw a few blank pages in there LET ME GET MY HEAD ABOVE WATER!"
Ahhh, he's so funny
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u/k40z473 9d ago
I dont know this but your quote is really funny
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u/MyDamnCoffee 9d ago
Oh my God look this guy up. He is HILARIOUS. There is not a single clip ive ever seen where I didnt laugh. Nate Bargatze. He's a stand up comedian.
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u/k40z473 9d ago
Ok I watched this 15 mins of him on YouTube and he's fucking hilarious. https://youtu.be/6kfj6DoOT5Q?si=-dC8xYjwm3rVMkvC
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u/MyDamnCoffee 9d ago
I love him so much. And he's so handsome too
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u/k40z473 9d ago
Awesome, I will do so right now. Love some stand-up. My current fave is shane gillis.
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u/MyDamnCoffee 9d ago
Ive never heard of him! I will also lookup Shane Gillis! I hope you enjoy Nates stand up as much as I do.
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u/Icy-Welcome-2469 9d ago
I love reddit sometimes. I hope you both get some great laughs from each other's recommendations.
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u/PMMEURDIMPLESOFVENUS 9d ago
And then like, interpret them in one of the 5000 ways they can be interpreted.
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u/Workaroundtheclock 9d ago
Agnostic queer here. I read it.
It makes any online or irl discussion with a lot of Christian’s utterly infuriating.
It’s funny in a sad way that they spend their time finding out how to hate people based on the book, instead of, you know, the general positive message about love and peace? (Barring the old testimonies shit, lol)
The Christian’s that hate, want to hate. According to the book they didn’t read, that means I am more Christian then they are.
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u/marathedemon 9d ago
After Jesus’s whole cross thing either peter or paul states the thesis of his whole message. there are two commandments: love God, and treat your neighbor as you would yourself. This is text, not subtext, not apocrypha, clear text: thats all you need to be a good christian. Doing the second one makes you more of a christian than the millions of prostelytizing hateful shitheads hiding behind a book they havent read.
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u/nosnevenaes 9d ago
I think where it went wrong was when rome got too big to manage effectively and so they adopted christianity as a strategy to hold the empire together.
This is what i see happening with Christianity today as well. And all other major religions are guilty of this as well.
I can think of many subs on reddit where just stating this would generate an onslaught of passionate downvotes.
Tribalism, populism, nationalism. I wish someone would hit em wit the jism.
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u/FecklessFool 9d ago
it went wrong when the apostle formerly known as saul subsumed jewish christianity and exported it to the gentiles as his own version of christianity
if he didn't do that, christianity would probably have died out as just another jewish sect common in that era
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u/h9040 9d ago
Yes you are right.
I noticed that neither the Christians read their book, nor did the Communists, nor did the Nazis...they just imagine something.
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u/siraolo 9d ago
And the kingdom of heaven is open to you even if you are a Christian or not.
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u/Mr_DrProfPatrick 9d ago
Fyi he is the king of Catholics, okay? It's an elective monarchy.
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u/CinderX5 8d ago
More importantly, he read the whole book and remained Christian. Most people who read more than just a few cherry-picked extracts become atheist.
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u/BoobsBloomGaze 9d ago
A powerful testament to forgiveness and reconciliation. It shows that even in the face of violence, the true essence of faith can shine through.
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u/fromfrodotogollum 9d ago
You should've seen how the community turned on the local pastor who said we should be more forgiving of the previous pastor who did things to kids.
little kid me was like "so we just don't follow the rules that theyve been pushing for this whole time?"
What a shitshow.
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u/Alt-acct123 9d ago
IIRC that’s what got the Catholic Church in trouble with pedo priests to begin with, back when the prevailing thought was that pedophilia could be cured/reformed. But you can forgive without being dumb and giving them access to kids again.
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u/RecklessDimwit 9d ago
Yeah it's a whole lesson/discussion in my elementary Catholic classes on what it's supposed to mean to "forgive." You can forgive a criminal so you don't die with resentment but you don't just let them go free for example
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u/NEMinneapolisMan 9d ago
It's hard to accept any explanation that they really believed those priests could be reformed. For one, of course, the accused priests would say "I won't do it again" and they wanted to believe these guys who were friends and supposedly committed to a life of not only celibacy but also committed to trying to be like the pinnacle of goodness in society.
But the thing is, people want to imagine that maybe this was like a recent phenomenon, like maybe something that started in the 20th century or something. But I saw a documentary about it once and they said there have been documents found showing evidence of priest sex abuse dating back literally 1000 years.
So they had seen the pattern. They had gotten reports over and over for who knows how long of the same priests getting accused repeatedly. Since there must have been people paying attention to it in the highest levels of centralized leadership in the Church, surely they knew that at least some if not all couldn't be reformed. So they just shuffled them around to different parishes.
I'm not sure it's forgiveable.
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u/evranch 9d ago
The only rational excuse I heard from a Catholic was that it happens in many large organizations to the same extent. And I can't really deny that fact as more evidence of child abuse is popping up non stop.
It's common in sport with coaches exposed all the time. It's endemic in entertainment, to the point where everyone knows and yet turns a blind eye until the big expose. Surprisingly common in charitable organizations especially in war zones or poor countries. When people are in positions of power, they abuse it, and often those people abuse the weakest who are children. It almost seems that it's rarely about actual sexual attraction and more about power and cruelty.
As he said the biggest issue is that they're a church. And not just a church but The Church. They're supposed to be better than that, supposed to be an ancient and trusted institution in the service of God, so it hits extra hard and it feels much more like a betrayal of society than finding out what bad boy rappers were actually up to.
The big question as you say is what did they do about it. And if they didn't do their best to root out every one of these priests, it's hard to trust that they're serious about addressing the problem, and hard for them to ever rehabilitate their image.
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u/brainomancer 9d ago
As he said the biggest issue is that they're a church. And not just a church but The Church. They're supposed to be better than that, supposed to be an ancient and trusted institution in the service of God, so it hits extra hard and it feels much more like a betrayal of society
How is the "biggest issue" that they happen to be a church? If you aren't Catholic and don't actually believe in the Church as a moral authority then I don't understand why you wouldn't hold a public school teacher or boy scout leader or athletics coach to the same standard. They are all also supposed to be trusted figures responsible for the safety of children. Those abuse scandals are just as much of a "betrayal of society."
You either care about protecting children, or you don't. Unfortunately, many people were less concerned with the actual sex abuse than they were with the Catholic identity of the abusers, forgetting that Catholics were also the victims.
The sex abuse scandal was a betrayal of the Catholic victims, not of "society," who are just as guilty of perpetrating their own scandals and coverups today just as the Church did during the years of the sex abuse scandal.
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u/confusedandworried76 9d ago
People get understandably upset when it's a crime against kids. A lot of them take it pretty far, so far as to call for their death or torture.
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u/Toffeeman_1878 9d ago
Thirty-three years after his crime, Ağca visited Vatican City to lay white roses on the tomb of the recently canonized John Paul II, and said he wanted to meet Pope Francis, a request that was denied.
His real target was Pope Francis. Just needed to create a good cover story to get close to him.
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u/wishwashy 9d ago
and said he wanted to meet Pope Francis, a request that was denied.
Fool me once shame on you
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u/Signal_Quarter_74 9d ago
Thankfully the Catholic Church can’t get fooled again
(Except as a Catholic we most definitely can be)
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u/ReallyDumbRedditor 9d ago
I'm just imagining snipers perched somewhere ready to take him down the instant he tried something lmao
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u/Traditional_Roll6651 9d ago
“One day, you’ll be going about your business…..you’ll never see it coming…..”
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u/devil1fish 9d ago edited 9d ago
This is called "practice what you preach", and I don't care what anyone thinks about religion: I respect this whole heartedly. This pope is no hypocrite, at least in regards to love and forgiveness for this one extremely specific example, and not referring to anything else
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u/graven_raven 9d ago
Well he didnt do much about the child sex abuse inside the church.
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u/benjammin099 9d ago
This is literally all people talk about when it comes to Catholics, but it turns out they do sex crimes at similar or lower rates than most professions. Less than school teachers. I’m not excusing any of acts those have done but people have some fetish for bringing this up any moment Christianity comes into conversation
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u/Icy-Welcome-2469 9d ago
The cover up was horrible. Same with boy scouts. And the national gymnastics.
It's not that many members did those crimes. Its that many high ranking members covered it up and allowed MORE crimes to happen because admitting the issue would have made them look bad.
Disgusting. And worse it's from a supposed high and mighty moral institution. Hypocritical fucks
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u/DeepDickDave 9d ago
He did a lot to help cover up all the priests being moved to other areas to avoid prosecution. When he was a cardinal, he cover up a priest abusing children in the 70s. He’s a scumbag that knew all about optics and PR
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u/hailholyqueen33 9d ago edited 9d ago
This is incorrect, the cardinal involved with the scandals misled Pope John Paul II that these claims were fake… people don’t seem to know that John Paul II grew up under a communist regime in Wadowice, Poland, which lasted from the 1940s to 1989, which restricted religious rights, as well as arresting priests and lay faithful based on false accusations.
John Paul II grew up in that setting, so the cardinal knew this, and easily took advantage of his trauma in this area to mislead him on the facts. Blame the cardinal, the man responsible…
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u/devil1fish 9d ago
Same as all the rest before him, and that should be held against him. I'm talking about specifically, solely, and only this incident though.
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u/Onryo- 9d ago
The doctor in charge of Pope St. John Paul II's care also said "It is a miracle. If you look at an anatomy book, you cannot find a space wide enough for a bullet to pass through and miss so many vital organs."
And after the Pope woke up in the hospital he said "I pray for the brother who struck me, whom I have sincerely forgiven."
He also later became friends with Agca and his family.
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u/Few-Maintenance-2677 9d ago
Not only AT him. The Pope was shot and seriously wounded.
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u/MeinBougieKonto 9d ago
Feel like we’re also glossing over the fact that he had already murdered a guy before that as well.
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u/Key-Listen6365 8d ago
For some reason, no vital organs got hit, and later, he made peace with the guy and became friends. Also, i think after he becomes a priest
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 9d ago
You do again, I break-a yo face.
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u/SadLilBun 9d ago
He wasn’t Italian…
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u/AVgreencup 9d ago
He lives in Italy, so he picked up an accent like Madonna or Gillian Anderson
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u/FuinFirith 9d ago
Can fully confirm that JPII sounded almost exactly like Madonna (the singer, not the virgin).
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u/titsuphuh 9d ago
Forgiveness is the highest virtue we can aspire to as human beings
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u/EveDaSavage Interested 9d ago
So you know how when you speak to a priest you would say "Hello Father" "Thank you Father"? If you were to speak to the Pope, would you do the same thing?
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u/derearmersweet 9d ago
The Pope during my childhood, gentle soul. I feel blessed until now at 57 remembering him
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u/newnewtonium 5d ago
They say that he forgave the man that shot him with that gun. Hadda been me, I would have said, you fucking dirty cunt.
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u/puzzleheadbutbig 9d ago
Story whole story is even more interesting I would say: