The statue was smeared with yellow and red paint and the inscription “Maxima Culpa”
Vandalism a Lodz, in Poland, against Pope John Paul II. On the anniversary of his death last night, some unknown persons desecrated the monument dedicated to him with red and yellow paint: the statue to Wojtyla stands in front of the local cathedral. On the pedestal was written “Maxima Culpa”; the reference is to the title of a book recently written by a Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek, in which the supreme pontiff is accused of having covered up the abuses committed on minors in his diocese, at a time when he was still a cardinal of Krakow.
A prayer for the guilty “I arrived in front of the monument at seven this morning. For the first quarter of an hour I stood there and didn’t know what to do. Then I felt the question within me: what would John Paul II have done? The answer is obvious. John Paul II would have prayed for the guilty”, said the archbishop of Lodz, mgr. Grzegorz Ryś.
“Despicable Act” Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau visited the sculpture in the morning and called the incident a “despicable act”. Subsequently, thousands of people attended marches in Warsaw and other cities in Poland in defense of the late Pope Saint John Paul II. Prayer vigils and masses were celebrated in memory of him on the 18th anniversary of his death.
18 years ago the death of Wojtyla On April 2, 2005, after one of the longest pontificates in history, John Paul II died. There are several celebrations that have been held in the Vatican these days on the tomb of the Polish Pope in St. Peter’s Basilica. The Polish ambassador to the Holy See, Adam Kwiatkowski, placed a bunch of flowers on it as a tribute from the entire government of John Paul II’s native country.
The memory of Prime Minister Meloni “18 years after the death of Pope John Paul II, whom I had the honor of meeting and knowing, I want to remember the figure of this great man, with a very strong spiritual strength, who taught so much and gave so much to our nation and to the whole world“, underlined Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.