After reading Anthony’s piece about Google bombs, I couldn’t resist a peek at “Jew Watch”, the anti-Semitic conspiracy site that came so high in searches for the word “Jew” that the civilized world had to displace it with a Google bomb. Their front page story (complete with photo of the recently deceased) is—I kid you not—“Was The Pope Jewish?”.
The headline links to a page where the damning evidence is collected. My favourites: many of the young Karol’s best friends were Jewish and “he was a gifted actor, and a fine singer“. Apparently the Pope-to-be became a devout Catholic to escape the Nazis, but it all got a bit out of hand and he ended up the head of the Holy Roman Church.
You guys can think of pithy last line for this one. This is another one of those rare occasions when I am lost for words.
I doubt it’s true (and, if it were, I doubt Jew Watch would be the people to uncover the truth), but it’s less unlikely than you might think. I know a German whose mother vehemently denies her (and therefore his) Jewishness to this day. Some of those who witnessed the Holocaust will never trust the world enough to admit their ancestry. Since there are German Jews whose families hid from the Nazis so thoroughly that they don’t even know they’re Jewish, I’d guess that there are probably some Polish ones too. And no-one’s as devout as a convert.
Why do Jew Watch think it would be controversial if it were true, though? There are loads of Catholic Jews around. St Peter, for a start.
Well, it doesn’t seem all that implausible. He was coming home from work one day, stopped off in a bar for a few beers, and next thing he knew he was head of the Catholic Church. It could happen to anyone. Don’t tell me you’ve never had a few hours of your life which went a bit awry after stepping into a bar. Maybe he said something along the lines of:
“Hey barman! If that’s a full pint then I’m the Pope”.
Wow… Jewish *and* heading up the sinister Luciferian conspiracy to create a totalitarian world government [http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=1551]! What else haven’t we been told?
PS: This preview-as-you-type feature’s rather swish.
“he was a gifted actor, and a fine singer”
There’s a very small percentile who enjoy a dancing Gentile.
If the former Pope was indeed a convert Jew, one might have expected he would hide it a bit better than having a Jewish best friend, playing football on a team of Jews, allegedly rescuing a young Jewish woman during WW2, refusing to convert a Jewish child adopted by Catholic parents, being the first Pope to visit a synagogue, and going on to pray at the Wailing Wall. Was this all meant to be some kind of double-bluff?
P.