Home of the Soul Cookie

Noelle pointed me to a Yahoo News page (from a Reuters story) in their “Oddly Enough” section:

Talk of Witches at Vatican Inquisition Conference

Talk of trials, burned witches and forbidden books echoed in the Vatican on Tuesday as Pope John Paul asked forgiveness for the Inquisition, in which the Church tortured and killed people branded as heretics.

The pope made his request in a letter read out at a news conference on a new book on the Inquisition.

He repeated a phrase from a 2000 document in which he first asked pardon “for errors committed in the service of truth through use of methods that had nothing to do with the Gospel.”

That was shorthand for torture, summary trials, forced conversions and burnings at the stake.

But in the letter, the pope went further, saying the request for forgiveness was for “both the dramas connected to the Inquisition as well as for the wounds to the (collective) memory that followed.” [more]

I’m vacillating between feelings of, “Right on!” and, “Gee. Thanks so much. So glad all the people your church tortured and slaughtered have been vindicated. Sort of.”

And lest you think that the Inquisition is solely the province of the past, its effects are still felt today.