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Has Interfax got it wrong again???? Any truth to this story?

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01 April 2008, 13:41 Interfax
Vatican sets to making Kosovo Catholic

Moscow, April 1, Interfax � The Vatican's missionaries got down to their plans to convert Kosovars in Catholicism, an article published in the Profile magazine reads.

It cites Kosovo Catholic bishop Dode Gjergji speaking before European democratic parties' officials in Brussels as he called Kosovo Muslims Islamized Catholics converted in Islam by terror.

Later in the American Congress he stressed again that absolute majority of Kosovars were "pro-Christian" and thus were "pro-European and pro-American."

Catholicizing Kosovo with its 3% of Catholics, its "cultural baptism" (this is how Gjergji calls his mission in the region) will provide Pristine with "a European ID card" and calm down European public opinion concerned with Islamic intervention in the continent, the author says.

"It's quite evident that Vatican has actively participated in the anti-Serbian game throughout Yugoslavian history thus fulfilling its global task of proselytism in the East of Europe," the article reads.

Its author claims that "these longstanding plans made use of historical situations, wars and cooperation with Tito's totalitarian regime. Yugoslavia only formally was hostile to pontificate as if preventing the latter from execution of its old missionary plans."

In the first half of the 20th century Vatican signed the Concordat with the government in Belgrade which declared the kingdom of Yugoslavia a state of mission. No other European state allowed Vatican to impose such definitions after World War I, the author notes.

After Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito died, Vatican was one of the first to back up Yugoslavia's separatism and formation of independent Catholic republics in 1980s

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I wish I believed it. But, alas, today is April Fool's Day.

Fr. Serge

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April Fools!

Interfax crows a lot about Catholics wanting to spread Catholicism everywhere and that always befuddles me. That is kind of what we are supposed to want to do (cf. Mathew 28:19)to begin with... With stories like this, the "Great Comission" always sounds like a cunning Jesuit plot!

What else could we get blamed for?

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I don't know if the story is true, but in the minds of many I would assume is still the fact that the late Bishop Marko Sopi went before the U.S. Congress and advocated independence for Kosovo.

http://www.savekosova.org/catholic=church=sopi.htm

Both Bishop Sopi and Shan Zefi were perceived to have views that were historically contentious.

http://www.kosovo.net/erpkim23oct03eng.pdf

I would assume both those are in some way related to this.

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Really, is it surprising for Interfax? In Russia there are unfortunately all kinds of conspiracy theories around. Conspiracies like "Catholics support Kosovo independence so they can steal Kosovo from Serbia and Orthodoxy" unfortunately are quite common.

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I totally agree with making Kosovo a Catholic country, so that the Albanian people take the most important step in their modern history: to abandon the infamous Turkish heresy and embrace the Christian faith of their ancesters.

However, I strongly disagree with the main objects. Is being Catholic being "Pro-European" and "Pro-American" in a political way?

Ask this to any Latin-American, Spanish, Italian, Polish or French Nationalist (and therefore Catholic) and you will find a totally different answer.

I don't know what kind of Catholicism they talk about. Maybe Modernism, "Liberal Catholicism", Ecumenical "Catholicism". This is what has lead Western Europe to Atheism.

Christianity is actually the opposite of the New World Order and its anti-human Capitalism.

I am completely sure that the new Kosovar State is a puppet of the Western interests. It's very bad if the Vatican wants to collaborate with the establishment, no matter if this implies the conversion of somee people to Catholicism.

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Originally Posted by MarkosC
Conspiracies like "Catholics support Kosovo independence so they can steal Kosovo from Serbia and Orthodoxy" unfortunately are quite common.

I guess the fact that a Catholic bishop lobbied the U.S. Congress for Kosovo to become independent doesn't help squelch such theories.

Some of the historical theories about the composition of the population before the Turks arrived being bandied about I think only adds to confusion.


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