| 15 second of fame |
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| World Affairs Talk | |
| Monday, 11 June 2007 | |
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He was stopped by guards. This incident is the first serious security breach in the Vatican regarding Pope Benedict since he was elected in April 2005. The man was unarmed and did not appear to have posed a threat to the Pope, who was not aware of what was happening behind him. The man took the Pope's bodyguards by surprise and managed to get to within about a meter of the Pope. Hundreds of people saw the drama live while thousands watched it on TV and now you are reading in on worldaffairs.com site. That makes the man quite famous, right? The man wearing a baseball cap and short pants jump out of the crowd and over a wooden barricade in St Peter's Square as the Pope passed by on the jeep to start his weekly general audience for some 40,000 people. Hurtling from the Pope's right, he tried to jump on the back of the moving ‘pope mobile’ but only managed to touch it before being wrestled to the ground by Vatican security guards. The Pope was standing on the open jeep facing forward and looking at the crowd to his left and did not see the man trying to get on the vehicle. The driver did not appear to know what was happening behind him since the speed of the vehicle did not increase. The whole episode lasted about 15 seconds. The man, believed to be between 20 and 30-years-old, was taken in for questioning by the local police and was due to be handed over to Italian police. Pope Benedict's predecessor, John Paul, was shot and nearly killed in the same square by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca on May 13, 1981. Share & Bookmark             |
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