Paralyzed Teen Meets Pope

INDIANAPOLIS STAR, March 26 — A paralyzed Indiana teen recently got his wish to meet Pope John Paul II, the daily reported.

Nineteen-year-old Joe Flitcrafts, of tiny Roann, Ind., was left a quadriplegic after an accident last year.

Thanks to the Indiana Children's Wish Fund, Joe, his parents Joey and Betty, his 13-year-old sister Jewel, and one of his nurses spent more than a week in Rome in late March. Accompanying them was Dr. Chuck Dietzen, a pediatric rehabilitation specialist who was one of Joe's doctors. During the trip, the family, which is not Catholic, met Pope John Paul II. A priest friend of Dietzen's, in Rome studying canon law, arranged the private audience for the Flitcrafts.

Italian Clone Doctor Attacks Vatican

REUTERS, March 22 — The flamboyant Italian doctor who is determined to be the first to clone a human being recently defended his plan before a medical council and accused the Vatican of starting a new Inquisition against science.

“I haven't committed any crime,” Dr. Severino Antinori told reporters before the closed meeting at the Rome Medical Association headquarters. “To think and do research is still not forbidden.”

Antinori, whose team says it is ready to start work on the first human clone within weeks, rebuffed volleys of criticism of the project and reserved his strongest words for the Vatican, which has called human cloning “grotesque.”

The Vatican holds that no human being should be denied the fundamental right to be conceived and born the natural way.

Cyprus Officials Silence Anti-Catholic Clerics

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, March 26 — Government officials in Cyprus recently told native anti-Catholic Orthodox clerics to tone down their opposition to a proposed visit by Pope John Paul II this spring, the news service reported.

“Our advice to some clerics is that they choose their words very carefully,” government spokesman Michalis Papapetrou told reporters March 26.

Papapetrou was responding to inflammatory remarks the day before by Kyrenia Bishop Pavlos when addressing a congregation to mark Greek independence.

The bishop told the faithful that the Catholic Church was responsible for the Ottomans sacking Constantinople in 1453, which he said led to Muslim Turkish rule. This interpretation of events alarmed a government that is seeking to secure European Union membership by 2003.

Cyprus was the first stop of St. Paul's first mission to spread Christianity outside Palestine. He is said to have converted the island's Roman governor at the time, Sergius Paulus, in the southwestern coastal town of Paphos where it is also said he received 39 lashes for his troubles. What is described as “Saint Paul's Pillar” still stands in Paphos as a site of pilgrimage.