"The light pictured here appeared over St. Peter's Basilica. It was 6:03 a.m. Italian time on the morning of April 8, 2005, 6 hours before Pope John Paul II's funeral. An Unknowncountry.com reader writes, 'I watched this as it happened live on TV. It was awsome [sic] and just a little chilling. I feel that this event (sign) is if [sic] great significance.'"
UFO sightings are typically accompanied by a sense of importance or incipience; I'm convinced it's an integral aspect (if not the defining aspect) of "high strangeness" events, whether subjective or induced by the phenomenon itself. In this case, I'm reminded of the mass sighting in Fatima, Portugal, in which witnesses observed a flying disk in a decidedly religious context.
4 comments:
Frankly, it looks to me like a searchlight reflected off a low cloud. Either that, or it's John Paul's soul winging its way to Heaven! 8^)
--WMB
John Paul II is, rather was, an asshole for turning a blind eye to the catholic church scandal here in Boston, alot of people's lives were ruined, some even killing themselves, with little to no repercussions for those who tried to cover it up *ahem* Cardinal Law you fat fuck.
In any case, I'm not sure about other religious texts but the Bible is riddled with UFO phenomena, if the stories are to be taken somewhat literally. The Book of Ezekiel is one such piece of the Bible that outlines a strange encounter with balls of light and strange beings. When Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, there were some strange things that happened, i.e. the commandments cut into stone, the object which shadowed them for a portion (if not the whole journey) from the sun, etc. This is just to name a few things. Religious conditioning projects maybe?
I'm just throwing that out there, though its not my belief as I tend to look at the biblical stories as symbolism-laden works of literature that portray classic human-element themes. Buts thats not to say I'm not somewhat religious either. It's kind of a predicament I have gotten my belief system into here.
info -- My own theory on the reason why the Church was so slow and lax in dealing with the priest sex-abuse scandal is that this kind of thing has/had been a kind of look-the-other-way accepted practice in the Church for centuries. This certainly does not by any stretch justify it but makes the reluctance to deal realistically with it at least understandable. (And you're right, Cardinal Law is a fat fuck and a lot of other things along the same lines that I won't go into.) BTW and re you're being "somewhat religious" -- While I'm neither a Catholic, a priest, or a pedarist, I guess I must exude some kind of implicit religiosity because different people (not my progeny) have, on several occasions, spontaneously addressed me as "father." (Probably something from a previous life.)
I have a confession to make: That is me in the picture during an OBE ;).