taqiyya
Amazing story. The Sultan’s advisors told him that he had to behead St Francis and his companion for insulting Islam. The Sultan replied that they were there to try and save his soul and he wouldn’t do it. A rare Moslem and not much has changed with Islamic intolerance.
Are any of the Christians still alive?
N.B.:
Pasha’s flagship banner decorated with Quranic verses from the 48th surah Al-Fath (The Victory) hung near the tomb of St. Pius V in Santa Maria Maggiore. In 1965 Pope Paul VI attempted a gesture of goodwill by returning it to the Turks. Indulging some apophasis, it is not necessary to comment that Paul VI was not a military man. The gesture was perplexing to those who harbor a memory of sacrificial valor, and it must have been an awkward reminder to descendants of the defeated. The banner now hangs in the Naval Museum of Istanbul.
Sloganeers avow that some wrong roads are paved with good intentions. The altruistic return of the banner of Lepanto has not enhanced “peace for our time.” In 2011, construction of the 300-foot corvette Heybeliada was completed: the first modern warship built in a Turkish shipyard. The prime minister, Recep Erdogen, attended the dedication ceremony and pointedly remarked that it was the 473rd anniversary of the Battle of Preveza, when an Ottoman fleet led by Hayreddin Barbarossa defeated a Holy League organized by Pope Paul III. Erdogen made no allusion to the subsequent defeat of the Turks at Lepanto. In 2014 he became Turkey’s first directly elected president. One can only speculate about what he would eventually want to do with Ali Pasha’s banner.
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More false religion of ecumenism.