'Images of Salvation’ Attracts Young Pilgrims

ASSOCIATED PRESS, July 25 — One of the less well-publicized sides of World Youth Day was the art show timed to mark it. “Images of Salvation: Masterpieces from the Vatican and Other Italian Collections” came to the Royal Ontario Museum last week and will run until Aug. 11.

According to Associated Press, it employs pictures and sculptures by “Michelangelo, Bernini, Lorenzo Lotto, the schools of Raphael and Rubens and others to illustrate the history of the Catholic Church from medieval times to the present.”

Museum curator Corey Keeble described why the show is unique: “It has works from private collections and diocesan collections throughout the length and breadth of Italy, and these things have never traveled.”

One painting, a Baroque work by Ludovico Mazzanti, depicts the ecstatic, levitating St. Joseph of Cupertino, a friar whom Keeble described as “a 17th-century Franciscan Spider-Man. … This is a man who did not merely jump for joy; he flew, he levitated and circled walls and ceilings,” Keeble said.

Associated Press noted that the flying friar is now the patron saint of airline pilots.

Mexican Boy Busted for Firing Air Gun Near Pope

REUTERS, July 31— According to Reuters news service, police arrested a 14-year-old Mexico City boy on July 31 for shooting a policeman with BB's from an air rifle not long before Pope John Paul II's motorcade passed by his house.

However, police denied any connection to the Holy Father. “This was not against the Pope. There should be no confusion about that,” police said.

Mexico's Federal Preventive Police, municipal police and presidential guard guarded Mexico City's streets for John Paul's fifth visit to Mexico. The 82-year-old Pope, who survived a 1981 assassination attempt in St. Peter's Square, was transported in a bullet-proof “pope-mobile” as tens of thousands of cheering, flag-waving Mexicans lined his route, Reuters reported.

The Holy Father and his convoy were unaware of the air gun incident, a Vatican spokesman said.

Pope Grieves Over Ukraine and India Disasters

VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE, July 28 — Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, sent telegrams in the Pope's name to two bishops whose local flocks suffered tragedies last week.

One went to Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, apostolic nuncio in India, where at least 29 died in a shipwreck on a lake in the Christian-inhabited region of Kerala. The other went to Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, apostolic nuncio in Ukraine, where last week's air show in Lviv caused more than 80 deaths and many more injuries.

“Pope John Paul, profoundly upset over the many victims and injured, wishes to express his closeness to those affected … and mourns with them,” the first telegram said.

The second telegram stated, “His Holiness invokes eternal rest upon those who have died and prays that the Lord will sustain the injured and the bereaved with his blessings of grace and strength.”