NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

    ROME (CWNews.com) - The Soviet Union's spy agency planned to kill Pope John Paul II and destabilize the Catholic Church, according to reports in Italian newspapers on Wednesday.

    The revelations come from a set of Czech documents sent to Italy's secret services and obtained by news media. A spokesman for a parliamentary committee that has seen the documents said the quotes in the newspapers sounded accurate.

    One of the quotes from the documents said: "There has been noted KGB activity to discredit the Catholic Church and the figure of the Pope with disinformation and provocation, not excluding his physical elimination." Pope John Paul II was instrumental in the overthrow of Communism in Poland during the 1980s, considered by many observers as the crack in the wall that led to the fall of Communism throughout Eastern Europe.

    The Czech documents also said the KGB had planted surveillance equipment in a statue in one of the rooms of the late Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the former secretary of state.

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