A Brief History On May 30, 1972, a British far left terrorist group went on trial for conducting 25 bombings over the previous two years. The soi-disant “Angry Brigade” saw eight of their members tried for the bombings, but only four of them were convicted. In any case, the trial was the end of the cleverly named group. Digging Deeper Targets of the Angry Brigade included banks, embassies, conservative politicians, and even a beauty contest. Luckily, no one was killed in the bombings, although one person was injured. At least two people were the subject of assassination attempts by the…
Browsing: Religion
A Brief History On May 24, 1993, Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, a Mexican Roman Catholic archbishop of the see of Guadalajara, was gunned down by 14 bullets while at the Guadalajara International Airport, allegedly because he was mistaken for drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán by rival drug cartel gunmen out to assassinate El Chapo. Digging Deeper Six other people were killed along with the Cardinal, allegedly by Mexican-American contract killers hired by the Tijuana Cartel to kill the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, Guzmán. In spite of the carnage wrought that day, nobody has ever been convicted and…
A Brief History On May 12, 1982, a bayonet wielding assassin was wrestled into custody by the bodyguards of Pope John Paul II at Fatima, Portugal only a year after John Paul II had been shot and seriously wounded in another assassination attempt! The would be assassin was a defrocked Catholic priest, a journalist and lawyer, a veritable living cliché! At least one other attempt was to be made on John Paul’s life, this time foiled when the assassins suffered a fire while building the bomb intended for the murder. Digging Deeper Many world leaders have survived assassination attempts, including…
A Brief History On May 6, 2001, Pope John Paul II of the Roman Catholic Church became the first pope to ever set foot in a mosque when he entered the Great Omayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, during a visit to that predominantly Muslim country. Digging Deeper Born in Wadowice, Poland, in 1920, Karol Józef Wojtyła was the first Catholic pope to hail from Poland and the first non-Italian pope since 1523. In fact, John Paul II was the first pope ever of any Slavic origin. John Paul II headed the Catholic Church from 1978 to 2005, the third longest…
A Brief History On March 13, 1825, Pope Leo XII published an apostolic constitution called Quo graviora, a church law that forbade Catholics from becoming Freemasons. His order confirmed earlier papal edicts and was confirmed again in 2023. Digging Deeper The current status for any Catholic joining the Freemasons is that those “who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion.” Apparently the secret rites of Freemasonry are what Catholics object to. Freemasonry goes back to perhaps 1599 or as recently as the 1700s and is an organization of people that…