[©allum]

Yeah, the bags under the eyes and all

[Neraphym]

His picture in TIME makes him look evil. Personally, I wouldn't trust a conservative pope in power that is responsible to no one. In my eyes, the catholic heirarchy will always be corrupt, even though the previous pope was a good person.

[Daryl C]

Now that the death of the pope is out of the way I fell a bit better to express my views a little better. As far as I'm concerned, the pope is a big farce. First off no one should have as much power as the pope whether it is actual power or symbolic. (This by the way goes for the commonwealth queen too.) Second no where in the Bible does it say that anyone should be so high up in religion. As far as I'm concerned the pope is put above everyone else in the world when he is no better than I am. The pope is a sinner like the rest of us and therefore no better than anyone else.

Now don't get me wrong, I have no problem with either the current pope or pope John Paul II as a person, but the whole idea of a pope is wrong to me.

[Goto]

I don't think it's fair to judge anyone on what they did when they were quite young, 60 years ago. Doubly true if he was forced into it. And even if he did support the Nazis, Hitler was hiding a lot of the really horrible stuff from the populace at large. He might just have been trying to defend his country and way of life, doesn't make him a bad person even if those he follows are.

I haven't really been following anything to do with him, I'm not catholic/religious and I don't think I even knew the previous Pope's name until he was near-death and popped up a lot more in the news. For all I know the new guy poisons puppies, although I don't think it's all that likely. It's not as simple as 'he was a nazi 60 years ago so he's still evil', though.