Latest neocon target: The Vatican
The neocon strategy to ensure their candidate is selected pope

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

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April 5, 2005-The international neoconservative movement, already
giddy over their bloodying the nose of the United Nations and
Secretary General Kofi Annan in the overhyped Iraq "oil for food"
brouhaha, the nomination of anti-UN wacko and Jesse Helms sycophant
and racist John Bolton as the next US ambassador to the UN, and the
comb-licking and dandruff-munching Paul Wolfowitz's selection as

Bank president, is now involving itself in the internecine politics
that will highlight the selection of the next pope.

It is clear that Bolton's major task at the UN will be to dump the
African Annan as Secretary General and replace him with someone
European and white. Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski's (whom
George W. Bush affectionately calls "Alexander") leads the list of
neocon candidates.

The dream candidate of the neocons for the next pope is the

of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn. According to a major neocon
media outlet of convenience, The Jerusalem Post, Schoenborn, on a
recent visit to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, echoed the
Christian Zionist line of George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich,
and neocon Catholic and New American centurion Michael Novak.
Schoenborn referred to Israel as "God's chosen land" for the Jewish
people. Responding to the comments of a clearly pained Palestinian
priest, who questioned the cardinal on his support for Israel's
usurpation of Palestinian lands and homes, basically said that as a
refugee from war time Czechoslovakia he understood the pain of
refugees. Commenting further, Schoenborn said that was a matter of
international law while the Jews' inheritance of the Holy Land

international law because it was prophesized in the Bible and that

Christians should embrace Zionism as the fulfillment of that Biblical
prophecy.

Although Pope John Paul II established diplomatic relations with
Israel and was the first pope to visit a synagogue, he was also
cognizant of the Holy See's responsibility to Catholicism's flocks in
Palestine and other Arab lands. For example, he maintained close

to the late Palestinian President Yasir Arafat.

John Paul II was not only strongly opposed to George W. Bush's
unprovoked invasion of Iraq but came out vocally against Bush's
father's Desert Storm invasion. Speaking to ABC's This Week on April
3, Jim Nicholson said that during his last meeting with the pope in
March, before he departed his post as American ambassador to the
Vatican to take up the position as secretary of Veterans Affairs, the
pope wanted to know where Bush intended to take America in the world
with its awesome temporal power. It is no secret that the late pope
had no time for Bush and his bellicose and aggressive ways and,
according to well-placed journalists for Catholic Italian newspapers
whom I spoke to in 2003, the pope commented to some of his closest
assistants that what he feared most in Bush was the coming of the
Antichrist as prophesized in the Book of Revelation. It was the fear
of the arrival of the Antichrist during his priesthood that plagued
John Paul II since his earlier years in Poland.

It will now be in the interests of Bush's extreme right-wing
evangelical base (and Bush's Svengali, Karl Rove) to ensure that
someone like Schoenborn assumes the papacy. They are looking for
someone who, unlike John Paul II, will support the death penalty and
more actively oppose family planning and stem cell research. The
evangelicals will also want a pope who will, unlike John Paul II,
permit right-wing Catholic clerics to involve themselves in

John Paul II strictly enforced his order that priests not engage in
politics. It was that order that cost Massachusetts liberal

Representative Father Robert F. Drinan his House seat. The
evangelicals will want to see that Vatican order lifted to permit
conservative Catholic priests to try and gain even more Senate and
House seats for the Republicans in heavily Catholic and Democratic
states like Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania,

and Michigan. An absolute majority in both chambers would give the

DeLays, Bill Frists, and Karl Roves a virtual free hand in the
appointment of anti-abortion and anti-gay judges.

For the neocons, Schoenborn would become a rubber stamp for America's
plans for global domination. Like Pope Pius XII who gave a wink and a
nod to Adolf Hitler's conquests, Schoenborn would see Washington's
continued wars as fulfillment of his interpretation of biblical
prophecy. In that respect, Schoenborn would complement Bush's other
religious supporters-Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson,

Sun Myung Moon-and bolster the neocon movement with the might of

Vatican. The result of such a power shift would help bring Latin
America, Catholic Europe, Francophone Africa, and parts of Asia

within the American sphere of influence.

Bush's key Catholic officials, policy makers, and political allies to
keep an eye on during the conclave of the College of Cardinals who
will select the next pope are Veterans Affairs Secretary Nicholson, a
member of the Republican evangelical movement and the person who, as
chairman of the Republican National Committee, cemented the ties
between the GOP and the religious Right; former Democratic mayor of
Boston and ambassador to the Vatican, Ray Flynn, who endorsed Bush

election in 2000 and failed to endorse John Kerry in 2004; Catholic
lay leader and American Enterprise Institute denizen and Project for

New American Century advocate Michael Novak; the National Review's

Dreher, a vehement opponent of John Paul II's antiwar policies;
Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran minister who converted to
Catholicism; Elliot Abrams's ally George Weigel of Project for a New
American Century infamy; Catholic "moralist" and wild Las Vegas party
man William Bennett; columnist Robert Novak, failed Supreme Court
nominee Robert Bork (shilling for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia),
and Opus Dei member Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. These and their
fellow travelers will be all over the corporate media outlets pushing
their favorite papal candidates, Schoenbron, Cardinal Francis Arinze,
and as yet unnamed "dark horse" ultra-conservative candidates.

The nightmare pope for the neocons, their fellow travelers in the
Israeli Likud regime, and the evangelical right is both a Frenchman
and a Jew. He is the recently retired Archbishop of Paris, a veteran
of the faculty of the Sorbonne, and a very close confidant of John
Paul II. Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, whose See was the Cathedral of
Notre Dame on Paris's Seine River, was born Aaron Lustiger in 1926.

the age of 13, Lustiger was placed in safekeeping with a French
Catholic family by his Polish Jewish immigrant parents. Lustiger's
mother and father later perished at Auschwitz. At the age of 14,
Lustiger converted to Catholicism. Lustiger remains a powerful member
of the College of Cardinals and John Paul II considered Lustiger to

his personal liaison to the French government and people.

Although Lustiger is a supporter of Israel, his unique viewpoints and
very office and religion are anathema to the Orthodox rabbis who
dictate religious policy in Israel. Lustiger is an enigma to the
Orthodox religious figures in Israel: for them Lustiger is an

and a potentially dangerous proselytizer.

Unlike Schoenbron, Lustiger would not only continue John Paul II's
policies of opposing Bush and the neocons but would ratchet things up
a bit. His abhorrence for Bush's preemptive warfare policies stem

his own bitter experiences with Hitler's similar policies that

his native France and all of Europe.

It is no secret that Lustiger, like Schoenbron, has traveled around
the world to increase his visibility with the Catholic faithful.
Lustiger impressed John Paul II with revitalizing the Catholic Church
in what had become a very secularist France. John Paul II was also
keenly aware that Lustiger's mother and father perished in a
concentration camp in the pope's native Poland. After his success in
reversing the fortunes of the Catholic Church in France, Lustiger
engaged in his own public relations campaign.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, during a visit to Australia

2001, Lustiger charmed his audiences, Catholic, Protestant, and

with his sense of humor. Rejecting those who believe the Catholic
Church should bend to popular will, Lustiger, said, "I'm sorry Jesus
Christ did not have a good public relations office because maybe he
wouldn't have had the bad problem of being crucified." But on other
subjects, Lustiger demonstrated flexibility. On feminism and
sexuality, Lustiger's Gallic view of the world was apparent, "These
are problems of society, not the church . . . When you look at the
issues around feminism, it's not going so good. When you look at the
issues of sexuality, it's not going so good." Lustiger also laid down
the gauntlet for the neocons and their policies of corporate control
and consumerism. Criticizing the wealthy elites who control society,
he said, "Citizens are being turned into units of an all-pervasive
consumption". He sees society drifting toward "new forms of
conformism, of unfreedom . . . I think Dr. Goebbels would be happy
with some of the advertisers of today. He would think, 'If I'd had
this agency I might still be in power.'" Lustiger continued,
"Democracy needs citizens not consumers. When people are merely
consumers of politics, they are more easily manipulated. And in our
time conformism is stronger than in the past." A strong defender of
human rights, Lustiger challenged Indonesia on the plight of East
Timor. That puts him at loggerheads with the incoming World Bank
President Wolfowitz, whose admiration for the Indonesian military
genocidaires has never known any bounds.

In a rare departure for a cardinal, Lustiger also criticized a former
pope, Pius XII for his failure to confront the Holocaust. "I think of
the silences of [Pope] Pius XII; his intercessions with Third Reich
authorities were restricted to converted Jews. Only those mattered to
him," Lustiger lamented. He also criticized past Christian leaders

their support for the Inquisition, Crusades, pogroms, and public
humiliations. And in one area that would be certain to inflame the
neocons, Lustiger has demonstrated his environmental credentials. He
told his Australia audiences that the "human species [was] behaving
like locusts, clustering in giant cities that cover Earth in concrete
and suck[ing] in enormous amounts of energy from the countryside."

It is truly amazing to suggest to some rabid right-wingers that the
next pope could be Jewish. Many of these religious dilettantes scoff
and bellow, "A Jewish pope! That'll be the day!" Showing their

ignorance of history and even the Bible, these intellectual paupers
fail to realize that Lustiger would be the second Jewish pope, the
first having been the first pope, Peter. Others say that Lustiger is
too old, not realizing that at the age of 78, Lustiger is in his

as far as many past popes are concerned. As a transition pope and
modernizer, Lustiger's term of office would not be critical. After
all, John Paul II's predecessor, the Italian John Paul I, lasted only
33 days in office before he died.

Not waiting for John Paul II's burial, the neocons are already

behind the scenes to ensure that the next pope will be as compliant
with their global agenda as Pius XII was with the National Socialists
and Fascists. It is up to Catholic leaders like Lustiger and his
fellow likeminded Cardinals who believe in John Paul II's views on
human rights and global survival to confront the machinations of the
neocons and their favored candidates, Schoenbron and Nigerian

Francis Arinze.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based journalist and syndicated
columnist. His forthcoming book is "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops &
Brass Plates."