Papal Christmas Carol Widely Distributed

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, Dec. 24 — Some 1.6 million copies of a recording of a Polish Christmas carol sung by Pope John Paul II were distributed in an edition of a Polish newspaper just before Christmas. The recording of “Little One, Little One” in a dialect from Poland's southern Tatra Mountains was made when the Pope met with a delegation of Polish pilgrims in the Vatican in 1981. The Pope wrote three new stanzas for the carol, one of his favorites, according to Gazeta Wyborcza, the newspaper that distributed the discs. The recording was recently rediscovered in the archives of a Catholic radio station in the eastern Polish city of Lublin.

Pope Appeals for Release of Priest and Other Hostages

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 23 — Pope John Paul prayed that the spirit of Christmas would inspire kidnappers to release their hostages, especially those being held for their faith.

The Pope, praying at his window overlooking St. Peter's Square on the Sunday before Christmas, mentioned Sacred Heart of Jesus Father Giuseppe Pierantoni. The priest has been held for more than two months in the southern Philippines by a Muslim gang known as Pentagon, the wire service said. Earlier in the day, police rescued a Canadian man being held for two months by Pentagon.

Star of Bethlehem Is Focus of Arizona Study

MAIL ON SUNDAY, Dec. 23 — Jesuit Father Christopher Corbally, vice director of the Vatican Observatory on Mount Graham in Arizona, believes the Star of Bethlehem was not a star. Instead, the Wise Men were following an extraordinary conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars in the constellation of Aries, he told the London newspaper.

“The Wise Men would have been interested in astronomy and astrology,” he said. “By working backwards, one can deduce that Jupiter would have converged with the two other planets around the time of Christ's birth. That seems the most likely explanation to me of a bright, shining star over Judea.

“It would have been highly symbolic because Aries the Ram is considered a ‘ruler,’” he said. “The meeting of these three powerful planets under this sign could have been interpreted as a celestial signal of a great person's birth.”

Father Corbally and 10 other Jesuits make up the official Vatican Observatory team at Mount Graham, three hours southeast of Tucson. Taking shifts from sunset to sunrise, they work with a computer-guided telescope built in the early 1990s. The priest is conducting a survey of the 3,600 nearest stars to Earth and the data will go to NASA.

“We are looking for any which might support earthlike planets and, thus, earthlike life,” he said.