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"This is a dream, I cannot believe it," Mehmet Ali Agca said when told he was free. He has long begged for a pardon, and recently (as noted by ChristianityToday.com Weblog) tried to absolve himself by claiming his shooting was predestined (the Vatican recently revealed that a shooting of a pope was prophesied as the third secret of Fatima). The Vatican has also lobbied for his pardon in this Jubilee year of forgiveness. But just because he's out of Italian prison doesn't mean he's permanently free: Turkey wants him imprisoned for the 1978 murder of a journalist. (The New York Times article links to its 1981 coverage of the papal shooting.)

"We are scared," says Herod Malik, head of the United Forum of Catholics and Protestants. "We have to go to international organizations because we have no faith in the Indian government." The group is asking the United Nations and watchdog groups like Amnesty International to intervene.

In taking note of George Barna's survey of evangelical demographics, the Baltimore Sun offers a kind of backhanded correction. Though the survey shows evangelicals are relatively wealthy, highly educated, and diverse, John Rivera starts his article this way: "The common stereotype about evangelical Christians: They're poor or blue collar, white, less educated and from the rural South." (No quotes on that, by the way. Apparently that's what everybody thinks). But after that lead sentence, it's a pretty good summary of Barna's findings.

The next time you're invited to pray, you might want to ask why. Military investigators yesterday revealed that the Navy chaplains conspired to stage a prayer vigil in hopes of getting Petty Officer Second Class David Tate to confess to the murder of his wife. "Special Agent James Lofstrom, the lead… investigator, testified that agents hoped the fabricated base prayer service—led by Navy chaplains with Marine and Navy approval and covered by the media—would 'awaken (Tate's) conscience to the deed and the wrongfulness of it,'" reports The San Diego Union-Tribune. The last-ditch plan worked. A few days later, Tate confessed. "It was a novel and unique investigation," Lofstrom testified. Puts a whole new spin on "When all else fails, pray," doesn't it?

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June (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44