Saturday, February 25, 2006

This Could Get Ugly

So I've been sent an article from La Nazione in Florence.... Headline says it all: "Priest invokes Mohammed; Vatican investigates."

Last weekend in Florence, the report says, a parish priest at the church of "Madonna delle Tosse" prayed the following during the closing prayer of the Mass (Whispers translation): "Lord, infuse in us the firmness of the Muslim believers in confessing our ideas before the world without caring about derision or of the disrespect of others. Teach us that the real war, as the Prophet [Muhammad] said, is that which happens within ourselves, on the inside, without hate nor the shedding of blood."

Suffice it to say, some parishioners really got hopped up -- the report says that they were "scandalized." The text of the prayer was, inexplicably, published in the parish bulletin.

The incident has been referred to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, an official of which has, on background, already called it "a very serious case" of liturgical abuse. The dicastery has opened a case.

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