From Our Vaults 22 Years Ago: January 8, 2003

by Admin · January 10, 2025

Vatican rejects US war plans

The Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, has called on the international community to avert a war on Iraq, saying that the United States has no right to attack the country outside the authority of the United Nations. Such an attack, he warned, “could provoke a type of anti-Christian, anti-Western crusade” in the Islamic world.

Mother Teresa to be beatified

Mother Teresa will be beatified on October 19, only six years after her death. Pope John Paul II had waived the usual five-year waiting period before a sainthood cause may be opened.

‘Black Madonna’ painter dies

Larry Scully, the South African artist who created the Black Madonna in Regina Mundi church in Soweto and other works of art in Catholic institutions, has died at the age of 80 in a car accident in Gordon’s Bay, Western Cape.

Editorial: No case for war

In his editorial on the threat of the US launching a war in Iraq, Günther Simmermacher notes that “the Bush administration has not convincingly outlined what precisely such a proposed war would prevent. In the absence of an explicit validation of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, one may speculate whether interests other than defence inform the United States’ urgency to act against Iraq.”

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