www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11278500
Motoring links :-
A steering wheel rosary?
Pocket Popemobile?
or non motoring
Benny beer ?
Lots to choose from.something for all tastes ? Details of some in the in the above link.
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Can't see why anyone would bother.
"Official merchandise"? Sounds like a good cue for Ron & Ian at the market to produce a load of "stuff" to flog to geezers.
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Just con~firms what I've always thought really, 'The Church' is all about MON£Y, akin to Ronald McDonald.
Benedictaphone ... They're aving a larf (all the way to The Bank)
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Yes, but Ronald MacDonald's food is better!
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Souvenir baseball cap?! baseball cap! This is Britain. We don't do baseball. Meet someone wearing a baseball cap, with the inevitable "NY" on it and you know to humour them and get out of there pdq. Baseball cap. Phah. Mutter mutter...
JH
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What about some humble pies? The clergy could eat them or they could be thrown at them by the disenchanted faithful.
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I see this place is not a fortress of catholic doctrine compliance......
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>> I see this place is not a fortress of catholic doctrine compliance......
>>
A Benny beer all round ?
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>> >> I see this place is not a fortress of catholic doctrine compliance......
>> >>
>> A Benny beer all round ?
www.ship-of-fools.com/gadgets/pope/243.html
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>>A Benny beer all round ? <<
I'll ave half.
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You sound like my wife. This is mine. It's all mine. There is just enough for me. I'm not sharing it. I'll get you one of your own.
Except it's digestive biscuits we're talking about.
John
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>> You sound like my wife. This is mine. It's all mine. There is just enough
>> for me. I'm not sharing it. I'll get you one of your own.
>>
>> Except it's digestive biscuits we're talking about.
Did you know your wife is living in my house pretending to be a black labrador?
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do we have any believers of any shade, other than Espada & Dog?
JH
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>> do we have any believers of any shade, other than Espada & Dog?
Well neither of them will be cheering a royal vist to the UK.
Jesus Christ and First officer spock are unlikely to visit the UK.
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I'd rather see Spock.
John
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Need to bring back indulgencies. Been our of fashion since the Renaissance but - could be a real money spinner
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There has been too much indulging already thank you! It has contributed a lot to the apathy about the visit
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What visit? Oh yes. That one.
I know a great joke about the last visit only it's very long and the ending is visual so I'll just have to leave you on tenterhooks.
John
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Not a single Pez dispenser for their Werther's originals.
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Scalextric have been slow to cash in on this. A Popemobile racing set would have gone down a bundle among Catholics.
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>> Scalextric have been slow to cash in on this. A Popemobile racing set ....
Might be difficult for someone of religion to reconcile their natural comments at the inevitable cornering mishap with the symbolism of the vehicle though. I know little of these things but I'd have thought three "offs" and you'd have to pray for hours !
:-)
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They should have done a little weatherhouse with a little man and a little lady who pop out according to the prediction.
In winter if she was out she would of course be Hail Mary.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 14 Sep 10 at 16:40
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Is there a getaway car version for Irish Priests heading down south ?
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Perhaps, after a vigorous session of prayers...a little relaxation with one of these ?
tinyurl.com/3ymkmtd
Ted
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Typo in the advert - it is a paypal pipe!
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I'm an Agnostic thank God.
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jesus i wouldnt have believed that MD
Im athiest by the way
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Last edited by: VxFan on Sat 17 Jun 17 at 20:51
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I remember on a visit to Lourdes laughing at the sheer tackiness of the gifts available and between our group we decided to have a competition to see who could get the tackiest item.
My mate won with a St Bernadette flick knife!!!! Still got photos of it somewhere!
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if you want tacky go to Montserrat
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If you want really tacky try lourdes.
opps beat me to it.
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 14 Sep 10 at 22:51
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I am one of those lapsed catholics who is just too lazy to go to mass but spend more time trying to justify why I don't.
Went to see the last Pope in Glasgow but not going this time even though its only about 5 miles from my work. Wife and kids are going though.
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I remember seeing a Pope in the Popemobile round the back of Victoria. Probably 80s, probably the last Papal visit. I only saw him cos I worked nearby at the time and it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
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"and it seemed too good an opportunity to miss."
He didn't miss, he shot him four times
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BG - to be fair I can't beat that! However in Lanzarote years ago I did come across a disc of coral which looked a bit like the underside of a big mushroom and which had a highly chromed Christ Crucified stuck onto it with a huge and visible blob of Araladite!
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Now if you were dyslexic and an insomniac as well as agnostic you could lie awake at night wondering if there is a Dog.
We know there is and he's here on this forum!
John
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I don't do visits now, but I'd be happy to autograph any old tat for the usual commision.
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I've been an atheist since I stopped being a Catholic more than half a century ago. For some time I was an aggressively militant atheist something like Richard Dawkins.
Later I came to understand that religion, or anyway a sort of fuzzy belief in an outside intelligence, a supreme being, may seem unnecessary to me but provides comfort, reassurance and a sort of moral armature for quite a lot of other people. Attempting to knock out these moral props from under people may seem amusing but is actually unkind and destructive. Two of my best friends are believers and quite a few others retain fragments of what I see as superstition. I don't hold back my own views but we understand each other perfectly.
I have not been favourably impressed by the media coverage of the papal visit. Banging on about the minority of paedophile priests - a lot of people seem to think the terms are synonymous - is not appropriate on the occasion of a papal State visit, the first ever to this country. It is rude, pointless and misleading.
Why do people want to embarrass the Queen or the Pope? It's quite embarrassing enough being a monarch or pontiff without the vulgar hordes yammering away with their simple-minded insistence that they personally don't buy any of this mediaeval superstition and flimflam.
Are we a nation of hard-edged realists? Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.
Tchah!
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It's not the crime that gets people's backs up, it's the cover up and the Pope was heavily complicit in that. He also helped create a situation where priests who were known to be serial offenders were allowed to carrry on regardless.
I too am a former Catholic and if the Pope is embarrased it's the least he deserves.
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Agree with the first part of your post AC, That Dawkings fellow was pretty nasty in his comments, basically saying that only dumb people believe in God, amusingly enough there was a slow news day survey which concluded that Dawkins was a character from the Simpsons...made me laugh that.
The Pope has got a lot to answer for though -For one thing his comments about condom use in the fight against AIDS is unbelievable...
I have growing respect for the Peter Thatchell modus operandi and sometimes think that the direct approach is best.
Is this the first State visit, didn't the Pope come here in 1982 ? Or was that some other sort of visit ?
The Vatican has got a lot to answer to, especially how they handled the Nazis in the war.....
Last edited by: Pugugly on Wed 15 Sep 10 at 13:04
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>> The Vatican has got a lot to answer to, especially how they handled the Nazis
>> in the war.....
you mean they didnt handle the Nazis in the war.
The Birth control thing is an eveil ploy. Its only in place to keep breeding more Catholics and keep them in overcrowded poverty and hence ignorance of any other way of life. Celibacy of priests is another thing, how can they provide moral leadership when they are excluded, and hence ignorant of how family life operates.
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>>Celibacy of priests is another thing, how can they provide moral leadership when they are excluded, and hence ignorant of how family life operates.
I agree with the above but I think you will find that another reason for it is the practicality side of it. The catholic church struggle financially and priests make their money from hatches, matches and dispatches etc. There simply isn't the money there to also keep a wife and kids!
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I saw a rather lovely cartoon a while back that showed a Monk weeping over an ancient papyrus manuscript:
"It says *celebrate*!"
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"The catholic church struggle financially and priests make their money from hatches, matches and dispatches etc. There simply isn't the money there to also keep a wife and kids!"
Perhaps they could dip into the hundreds of millions of dollars looted by Croatian Nazis, turned into gold and held by the Vatican Bank. And by Croatian Nazis, I mean the Catholic Ustashi who with the blessing of the church and the active participation of the clergy, slaughtered 750,000 Serbs and Jews between '41 & '45 in a manner that shocked even the Germans.
Or perhaps they could peel off and flog the tons of gold gilding from their churches in South America (where millions of children sleep on the streets)
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>>I have growing respect for the Peter Thatchell modus operandi and sometimes think that the direct approach is best
www.scmo.org.uk/articles/scottish-bishop-challenges-credibility-of--peter-tatchell.html
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>> basically saying that only dumb people believe in God,
It's what I used to think in my youthful arrogance PU. But I came to realise that it isn't true. The whole thing is more complicated, or more subtle, than that.
Of course there are lots and lots of dumb believers, equalled only by the proportion of dumb atheists and unbelievers.
Dumb believers want to force people to believe. Dumb unbelievers do the same thing in reverse. Lots of vulgar abuse, shrill propaganda and bad faith on both sides.
I try to avoid spending too much time with dumb people myself.
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>>Is this the first State visit, didn't the Pope come here in 1982 ? Or was that some other sort of visit ?
>>
ITV News says
"The last visit by a Pope, in 1982, was a private and pastoral one because it coincided with the Falklands war"
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Ah -I wasn't aware it was a private visit - my memory is of a Popemobile and crowds of thousands everywhere he went ! :-)
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AC, one of my issues is that if this was any other religion, particularly I am thinking Muslims, Sikhs etc, the media and other press simply would not be allowed to publicly condemn them and stir up dirt the way they do with Catholic, and Christian religions.
In this equality age, where is the huge condemnation of woman having to wear burkkas and having to be second class in their community? And the campaigns by the tabloids to expose it like they do every time a priest, vicar or whoever does wrong?
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At the end of the day we do criticise other religeons as much as we do catholic. Rarely a day goes by when Burkhas, female right, sharia law, stonings, etc is not mentioned and roundly condemed.
Islam does not have one secular head, the Prophet Mohamed, blessings and peace be upon him, died some years back, so wont be coming on a vist to act as a focal point for condemnation. The catholic church does have such a focal point, so his visit is bound to create such comment.
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And I think it's right that people criticise and question, been too much forelock tugging in this country.
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I found this debate quite fascinating. I salute Anne Widdecombe and Stephen Fry for avoiding personal jibes and actually addressing the issues at hand, unlike Christopher Hitchens and Archbishop John Onaiyekan respectively.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kuzYwzGoXw&feature=related
Worth a watch if you have a spare 45 minutes or so, whichever side of the debate you are on.
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>>you could lie awake at night wondering if there is a Dog<<
Blessed are the pure in art, for they shall see Dog.
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"Can I speak to someone else, like whoever made you" says the man. Which is suitably ignored, as you might expect. The whole thing is threatening and intolerant. "worship me, or else", he says. Religion at it's worst I'm afraid.
John
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>>Religion at it's worst I'm afraid.<<
100% TIC Brother John, I forgot to add the :)
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That's ok D, Ive got you down as ploughing your own furrow, not one for organised religion.
John
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>>Ive got you down as ploughing your own furrow, not one for organised religion.<<
That's an affirmative John - a freelance monotheist but, I like to listen to and consider all sides,
I have a lot of time for the JW's actually, and the Coptic's, although I've never come across any Coptic's.
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One of his side-kicks has pulled out of the visit saying that the UK has become a third world country marked by "a new and aggressive atheism".
Obviously been reading c4p then !
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"marked by "a new and aggressive atheism"."
I hope so
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Comments like that from a high priest of medieval superstition and idol worship should only make it more so.
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I think there's an Eastern Orthodox church in Manchester. They sound comparatively normal cf the Rome mafia. Former RC (its compulsory in some families!) but no longer, not believed a word of its dogma for 50 years. Damned catechism, they never could explain. "Just stop arguing and believe." Or else. Anathema is an awful thing I believe:)
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They all breed Hope then despair. Richard Dawkins for P.M.
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This pope visit is beginning to get right on my t^Hbits.
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Quote BBC News
The Pope has compared "atheist extremism" to the Nazi tyranny of WWII in a speech given in Edinburgh as he begins a four-day visit to the UK.
The pontiff praised Britain's fight against the Nazis - who "wished to eradicate God" - before relating it to modern day "atheist extremism".
Afterwards his spokesman Federico Lombardi said: "I think the Pope knows rather well what the Nazi ideology is".
End quote.
Well doesent that just about make you want to puke. A Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, on behalf of an organisation who did nothing to prevent or even speak out about the slaughter of non catholics, has accused us in the UK of being modern day Nazis.
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 16 Sep 10 at 17:46
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I'm starting to think this pope may be a blessing disguised as an old man in a dress. The last one was dangerous because he was slick and lovable and media-friendly, and had inspired all those heroic Poles in their time of need, so he was constantly on the news playing to adoring - if ignorant - crowds. This one has the media skills of Mr Bean and a well-known dodgy personal history, and is leading his church from one disaster to another. He's the equivalent of the opposition batsman you just don't want to get out, because he's doing your team more good than his own.
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"an organisation who did nothing to prevent or even speak out about the slaughter of non catholics"
Oh they went way further than 'doing nothing to prevent the slaughter' as I already posted further up.
They condoned it, they participated, they carried out the slaughter, they aided war criminals in their escape, they laundered the looted gold and art and engaged in a healthy does of cover up.
www.fantompowa.net/Flame/yugoslavia_catholic_church.htm
I'll just pull a quote from that article to emphasise the point
"So dreadful were the acts of torture and murder that even hardened German troops registered their horror."
The US have been attempting recover looted money for the victims for the last ten years in a lawsuit "Alperin v. Vatican Bank and Franciscan Order", the vatican have greased and slimed their way out so far, probably in the hope the last few frail survivors will die before the case sees the light of day.
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BBD,
please repent or you could be condemned to eternal damnation.
While us degenerates will be downstairs warming our toes on the fire, drinking fine wines and having our every need attended to by beautiful maidens, you will be stuck on a cloud at 50,000ft playing a harp for all eternity!
How would you like that?
Kevin...
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"us degenerates will be downstairs warming our toes on the fire, drinking fine wines and having our every need attended to by beautiful maidens"
If there were any doubts that my behaviour would get me sent down there, they were dispelled a few months ago when two priests turned up on my doorstep and I told them to f' off and don't come back. How do they get passed the security? Vampires...
Anyway, if you get there before me, bag me a couple of curvy mature maidens, a place close to the fire and perhaps a couple of sex dwarfs (I like to have one under each arm).
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>>A Pope who was in the Hitler Youth,
as it was compulsary for all 14 year olds at that time to do
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In fairness a lot of decent people did serve in the German armed forces.
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so did a lot of non decent people.
The point is, he served in the hitler youth, mandatory or not, so the last thing he should refer to, and even liken us to, is Nazis.
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I thought it was good manners to be polite when you're visiting folks.
John
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I'm surprised no one here's mentioned catholic priests and child abuse.
The Pope's not mentioned it either, but I'm not so surprised about that.
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you missed the reference to Werthers Originals.
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...you missed the reference to Werthers Originals...
Did the Pope stop to buy a packet?
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>> liken us to, is Nazis.
Did the Pope do that Zero? I think it was some prelate who had decided not to come because he didn't like the tone of some of the media coverage. I doubt if that remark had the papal blessing.
I have a friend down the Grove, a bohemian woman of German origins, very clearly anything but a Nazi, who was in the Hitler Youth once. She was in the right age, class and place t be plonked in it as a helpless teenager.
If I were Pope I would take a reformist line on birth control, and especially on condoms as a partial protection against HIV. But I have never been Pope or even a Cardinal, so I don't know how possible it is.
Much the same sort of inexplicable nonsense as apparently intelligent western politicians who have sown the odd wild oat pretending they think marijuana is a dangerous drug. A bit more important though I grant you.
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Mumbo-jumbo !
I don't see a lot of deeply religious folk posting on this thread, which has been very interesting. I have no interest in any religion, I suppose I'm a humanist , if anything.
I organised a humanist funeral for my mother and I was impressed by that.
A thought occurs to me now and again.........what if there is no God, no resurrection in the after-life, no afterlife anyway....just darkness and death....the end ! Finito.
A bit sad on the old Pope then, eh ? Just a stone sarcophagus in the crypt at St Peter's to look forward to.......same for all of them, Cardinals, Bishops and all the rest including our own Wurzel Williams ! What a wasted life....at least the non Catholics get to have a legal legover. Suicide bombers.....eternal paradise....a hundred virgins ? Lord, I'd have to get Big Dave in to help me. No, Lads...just a hole in the sand with your bits shovelled in.
Anyway...Roland Ratminger's already had a taste of hell.......I understand he's been seranaded by SuBo !
Ted
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"A thought occurs to me now and again.........what if there is no God, no resurrection in the after-life, no afterlife anyway....just darkness and death....the end ! Finito. ...a hundred virgins. Lord, I'd have to get Big Dave in to help me."
Well I'll give you my take on it.
For the last 15 billion years I was dead and fairly chilled out and happy. In about 30 years, I'll be dead again. (That's why I'm trying to get my hundred virgins while I can still appreciate them).
It's the 70 years in between that are the hardship. Money worries, mortgages and mother-in-laws. Why anyone would find comfort in dragging this out into an after life or reincarnation just beats me.
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Too right, Chum.....save a couple for me....don't mind second hand !
Bedtime 4 me......off out tomorrow, bike groomed and fed, bag packed and off into the wide blue yonder........that's if I wake in the morning...of course. See y'all Sunday !
Ted
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Yes. It takes courage to stand up as he has. Poor devil. Him and many more. And has it stopped?
John
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Good grief. Theres a man who has pain and bad memories.
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memorabilia of the Popes visit - Zero
