John Paul II with the representatives of the other religions outside at a square in Assisi. From this video.
On October 27, 1986, during the “Year of Peace” declared by the UN, Karol Wojtyla (better known as “John Paul II”) organized a meeting in the Italian town of Assisi. The purpose was to bring together representatives from various religions to “pray for peace”.
To this day, the event remains one of the biggest scandals in church history, since it was aired on television and showed the alleged pope standing together with Orthodox bishops, Buddhist monks and shamans, while each of them prayed either to the real God or to false gods for “peace”. Even though Wojtyla technically didn’t pray “together” with the representatives of the other religions, he organized the event and tacitly approved the prayers with his presence, thus confirming the participants in their errors.
This event was then the inspiration for many such events: its successor events at the same place in 1993 and 2011 led by “John Paul II” and “Benedict XVI” respectively as well as many other smaller events held throughout the world.
What was really disturbing was not just what happened during the event, but also what John Paul II said about it before and after, as well as the way he described the prayers of all the unbelievers and pagans who participated.
John Paul II with the representatives of the other religions before the Portiuncula chapel (the chapel itself is inside the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels in Assisi). From this video.
The original event
At the meeting, John Paul II gave an address to the assembled delegates. Afterwards, followers of the various religions went to different locations to pray, each according to their own “religious tradition.” For example, in the Church of St. Peter’s, Buddhist monks gathered to “pray” and placed a statue of Buddha on top of the tabernacle. In September 1997, Assisi was hit by an earthquake and the ceiling of the church collapsed. (According to reports, the organizers eventually asked the statue to be removed, however, it is still a scandal that a Catholic church building was given to Buddhists for their pagan prayers.)
Buddhist monks placing incense before the altar and putting a Buddha on top of the tabernacle in St. Peter’s Church in Assisi. Screenshots from this video.
After the followers of each religion had prayed separately, they gathered together, and representatives of the various religions prayed once more, while John Paul II and the others stood there watching them.
The John Paul II fansite “jp2online.pl” mentions “47 delegations representing 13 religions — Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and several traditional African and American religions”, who participated in the event. The Anglican “Archbishop of Canterbury”, the Dalai Lama, the chief Shinto priest of Japan and Mother Teresa of Calcutta were among the attendees.
From this video.
A contemporary newspaper report described the events like this: “At the altar of the one Zoroastrian–a Bombay Indian believer in the ancient fire-worshiping religion of Persia–a young Italian woman volunteer periodically fed modern charcoal igniter pellets to the sacred iron brazier that was the focus of his prayers for peace.
An African animist snake worshiper the Pope met last year on a visit to Togo appeared to be ill at ease as he delivered a staccato prayer to ‘Almighty God, The Great Thumb,’ from a platform in Assisi’s Renaissance city hall.
In his prayer, the witch doctor cursed ‘all the wicked persons who frustrate this laudable effort made to achieve peace,’ and added, ‘Let all the evil ancestors and spirits receive their drink and flee to their doom.’”
An American shaman had this to say at the event:
“O Great Spirit, I raise my pipe to you, to your messengers the four winds, and to Mother Earth, who provides for our children.”
From this video.
Wojtyla about the prayer meeting
Before we get to the speech of Wojtyla at the event itself, I am going to quote some of his statements about the event at other occasions. During his rule, John Paul II referenced the prayer meeting multiple times before and after it happened. A few days before the event, on October 22, 1986, he addressed the crowd at the general audience. He claimed that although one was not allowed “to pray together”, one could “be together in order to pray”.
“This ‘coming together to pray’ takes on a particularly deep and meaningful significance because, side by side, we will implore God for the gift that all of humanity needs most urgently today to survive: peace.”
This suggests that everyone who prayed there was, in fact, praying to God—including the shamans.
In a speech in January 1987, he said about the meeting: “Authentic prayer already changes man’s heart. God is fully aware of what we need. If he invites us to ask for peace, it is because this humble approach mysteriously transforms the people who pray and puts them on the path to reconciliation and brotherhood. […] He [the person praying] understands, finally, that he cannot ask for peace if he stands idly by. His prayer becomes an expression of his willingness to work in order to overcome these obstacles, by making a resolute commitment to promote peace. These are the benefits that prayer brings. Is not this what resulted from all the prayers uttered in Assisi? […] But in itself the authentic act of prayer puts one on the path of true peace because it signifies and brings about conversion of heart.”
This speech is clear: John Paul II claims that all the prayers at Assisi are “authentic prayers”. And he said this about “authentic prayer” with regard to the same Assisi event in another speech of his in December 1986:
“At Assisi, in an extraordinary way, there was the discovery of the unique value that prayer has for peace; indeed, it was seen that it is impossible to have peace without prayer, the prayer of all, each one in his own identity and in search of the truth. In keeping with what we have said, one must see in this another wonderful manifestation of that unity which binds us together, beyond the differences and divisions which are known to all. Every authentic prayer is under the influence of the Spirit ‘who intercedes insistently for us… because we do not even know how to pray as we ought’, but he prays in us ‘with unutterable groanings’ and ‘the One who searches hearts knows what are the desires of the Spirit’ (cf. Rom 8:26-27). We can indeed maintain that every authentic prayer is called forth by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person.”
So, if a Hindu prays to one of his false gods, that is inspired by the Holy Spirit. This is blasphemy.
He also said that the prayer meeting is a visible manifestation of what the Second Vatican Council meant by “ecumenism” and “interreligious dialog”:
“The event of Assisi can thus be considered as a visible illustration, an exegesis of the events, a catechesis, intelligible to all, of what is presupposed and signified by the commitment to ecumenism and to the inter-religious dialogue which was recommended and promoted by the Second Vatican Council.”
If John Paul II was a valid pope and the Second Vatican Council was a valid council, then during his reign he was the most qualified person on the planet to tell us what the Council means. If we take him at face value, then “interreligious dialog” is nothing less than apostasy.
He claims later in the speech that the event was “without the slightest hint of confusion or syncretism”. Yes, technically, he didn’t pray together with the members of the other religions, however, he organized the event, he tacitly approved their false worship and praised it.
From this video.
His speech at the event
In his opening speech, Wojtyla said:
“The coming together of so many religious leaders to pray is in itself an invitation today to the world to become aware that there exists another dimension of peace and another way of promoting it which is not a result of negotiations, political compromises or economic bargainings. It is the result of prayer, which, in the diversity of religions, expresses a relationship with a supreme power that surpasses our human capacities alone.”
Hmmm… Pope Pius XI had something else to say about how peace can be achieved. In 1922 after World War I, he published his encyclical Ubi Arcano, in which he wrote:
“Peace indeed was signed in solemn conclave between the belligerents of the late War. This peace, however, was only written into treaties. It was not received into the hearts of men, who still cherish the desire to fight one another and to continue to menace in a most serious manner the quiet and stability of civil society. […] There has followed the blind rule of the inferior parts of the soul over the superior, that rule of the lower elements ‘fighting against the law of the mind,’ which St. Paul grieved over. (Rom. Vii, 23)” (Ubi arcano 20)
And what was the pope’s solution:
“There is over and above the absence of peace and the evils attendant on this absence, another deeper and more profound cause for present-day conditions. This cause was even beginning to show its head before the War and the terrible calamities consequent on that cataclysm should have proven a remedy for them if mankind had only taken the trouble to understand the real meaning of those terrible events. In the Holy Scriptures we read: ‘They that have forsaken the Lord, shall be consumed.’ (Isaias i, 28) No less well known are the words of the Divine Teacher, Jesus Christ, Who said: ‘Without me you can do nothing’ (John xv, 5) and again, ‘He that gathereth not with me, scattereth.’ (Luke xi, 23)” (Ubi arcano 27)
“[…] First, and most important of all, for mankind is the need of spiritual peace. We do not need a peace that will consist merely in acts of external or formal courtesy, but a peace which will penetrate the souls of men and which will unite, heal, and reopen their hearts to that mutual affection which is born of brotherly love. The peace of Christ is the only peace answering this description: ‘let the peace of Christ rejoice in your hearts.’ (Colossians iii, 15) Nor is there any other peace possible than that which Christ gave to His disciples (John xiv, 27) for since He is God, He ‘beholdeth the heart’ (I Kings xvi, 7) and in our hearts His kingdom is set up. Again, Jesus Christ is perfectly justified when He calls this peace of soul His own for He was the first Who said to men, ‘all you are brethren.’ (Matt. xxiii, 8)” (Ubi arcano 33)
“It is apparent from these considerations that true peace, the peace of Christ, is impossible unless we are willing and ready to accept the fundamental principles of Christianity, unless we are willing to observe the teachings and obey the law of Christ, both in public and private life. If this were done, then society being placed at last on a sound foundation, the Church would be able, in the exercise of its divinely given ministry and by means of the teaching authority which results therefrom, to protect all the rights of God over men and nations.” (Ubi arcano 47)
Oops! It would appear that conversion to Christianity, to the true religion of Christ, can give us the peace of Christ, which is true peace. But was Wojtyla interested in converting the pagans, unbelievers and heretics present? He tells us:
“The fact that we have come here does not imply any intention of seeking a religious consensus among ourselves or of negotiating our faith convictions. Neither does it mean that religions can be reconciled at the level of a common commitment in an earthly project which would surpass them all. Nor is it a concession to relativism in religious beliefs, because every human being must sincerely follow his or her upright conscience with the intention of seeking and obeying the truth.”
By stating that they don’t seek “a religious consensus among ourselves”, he admits that he didn’t want to evangelize.
“Our meeting attests only – and this is its real significance for the people of our time – that in the great battle for peace, humanity, in its very diversity, must draw from its deepest and most vivifying sources where its conscience is formed and upon which is founded the moral action of all people.”
So, he claims that exercising a false religion is “vivifying”. Being “spiritually alive” means being in the state of grace. Can worshiping snakes in voodoo be a source of grace?
“We shall go from here to our separate places of prayer. Each religion will have the time and opportunity to express itself in its own traditional rite. Then from these separate places of prayer, we will walk in silence towards the lower Square of Saint Francis. Once gathered in the Square, again each religion will be able to present its own prayer, one after the other.”
“John Paul” just stood there on the square, while representatives from the other religions recited their prayers.
Henry Sire, a former knight of Malta, who was kicked out of the order for his book “Dictator Pope” about “Francis”, wrote in one of his books about the event:
“The appeal to the Second Vatican Council was freely made in justifying the prayer meeting at Assisi, and one would like to refute it by saying that nothing in the Council’s documents proposed such an act or authorised Catholics to associate with idolatry. One would say so if the appeal had not been made by Pope John Paul himself. He, who had attended all the sessions of the Council, emphatically asserted that the meeting of Assisi was a fulfilment of the Council’s spirit. There we have it, then, from no less an interpretative source than a pope. The meaning of the Second Vatican Council is that Catholics should encourage idolatrous worship and associate themselves with it in their prayers. If that is true, it is a far more serious indictment of the Council than any I have made hitherto. The religious subjectivism implied in the Declaration on Religious Liberty bears fruit in the syncretism of the Assisi meeting. The foundation of religion becomes not the God who reveals himself to man but the religious instinct of man, groping for faith, whatever its object may be. It will be a matter for future popes and councils to decide whether that was truly what the Council meant or whether the aberration belongs entirely to Pope John Paul II.”
Actually, if John Paul II was a true pope, the credibility of the Church would be over, since if a pope can order an “aberration” like this, there is no guarantee that the “correction” couldn’t be reversed as well.
Let us pray for a true pope who will call the pagans and unbelievers of the world to conversion, rather than confirming them in their errors.