[back] Editor’s Desk Frank R. Zindler Pope John Paul II the Criminal hundred years from now, who will be remembered as the most evil man of the twentieth century? Adolf Hitler, you think? Perhaps, but not likely. I suspect that if there is any civilization surviving on this plundered planet a century hence, its historians will point with irrefutable evidence to Pope John Paul II as the most evil man of our times. To be sure, Hitler’s image is not likely to improve any with age. He will always be remembered as a man who brought about the deaths of some millions of innocent people, yet remained a Catholic in good standing until his death. But his crimes will pale beside those of John Paul II. Whereas Hitler was guilty of premeditated genocide against particular groups of humans, John Paul II could be charged with premeditation of genocide against the human race itself, for advancing a “Pro-Life Program” that actually is the most fiendishly Pro-Death Program ever seen in the history of our species. By a hundred years from now, at least a billion people will have suffered extended agony and death because of John Paul II’s opposition to birth control, sterilization, and abortion - opposition exerted by hundreds of his lobbyist minions in the parliaments and legislatures of the world. It will be understood that this pope’s “pilgrimages” back and forth across the globe were really political exercises in extortion - exercises that weakened the fabric of secular societies and strengthened the political muscle of the Vatican theocracy. It will be pointed out that this pope had a science advisory committee which had explained the ecological realities of life on this space-ship earth. It will be noted that he rejected the scientific fact that the planet’s “carrying capacity” can only support indefinitely about one-half the 1985 population of the world. It will be remembered that this pope went to the starving in Africa and South America and encouraged them not only to breed themselves into oblivion, but to increase many-fold the number of unfortunate innocents who would have to starve later on. John Paul II will be remembered as the man who increased human misery more than anyone in the history of civilization. The pope’s callous encouragement of procreation, with its resultant poverty, will be shown to have had a profoundly destabilizing influence upon the governments of the world, and to have led to the ascendancy of dictatorships where formerly fragile democracies had existed. Indeed, so threatening are the pope’s pronatalist preachments to the future of freedom, it may well be that democracy will be extinct a hundred years in the future. If so, instead of future historians proving me right in my assessment of Karol Wojtyla - alias John Paul II - the memory of John Paul II will be revered and glorified by the tyrants of the times as the man who made it possible for them to come to power. It has been estimated that the Roman Catholic Church killed over eleven million people during the course of the Inquisition, but John Paul II may be responsible for more than that in his own lifetime. The juggernaut of genocide which he has set in motion will continue to crush and kill the innocent of this earth far into the future. Is it any wonder that American Atheists, Inc., has demonstrated against this pope during every one of his invasions of our fair land? For twenty years we have been trying to get our compatriots to recognize the evil of this man and the institution he represents. While we have succeeded in getting at least some Americans to recognize the impropriety in paying for this man’s subversions with the taxes of American citizens, and we have gotten about the same number to recognize the unconstitutionality of diplomatic recognition of his church, alas! Very few perceive or understand the profound and monstrous wickedness of this man and his agenda. But we’re not giving up! Read about it in this issue.