Talk:Pope John Paul I

More than 11,000 web sites report that this man's name was "Albino Luciano", and nearly 4000 report "Albino Luciani". If the latter were merely a simple-minded misspelling, I would not expect such a large proportion of the total number of sites to report that. And some of those look somewhat authoritative. Is this a case in which sometimes one spelling is right and sometimes the other? If so, could someone explain for the benefit of those of use who don't know Italian? Michael Hardy 20:25 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC)

As far as I know, his name unambiguously was Albino Luciani, never Luciano. I wouldn't pay too much heed to websites. I'm come across apparently authoritative sites that have monumental errors on a vast range of issues. And in my academic career I regularly came across some of the most authoritative sources standing categorically 'x' or 'y', even though from primary sources I know it is complete garbage. All I know is that in 1978 when he was elected, he was named as Albino Luciani. People in the Vatican called him Albino Luciani. The media named him 'Albino Luciani' at the time. He was nicknamed Papa Luciani. I have seen no evidence that all of that is wrong. As I have said, websites can contain amazing information, but also absolute and total b******t. Luciano seems like an easy mistake to make. All it takes is a couple of people in normally credible sites to mistype it or misremember it, for others to follow, and the mistake to snowball. At 11,000 it may be a massive snowball, still a snowball. After all, Luciano is (I suspect) a more common name than Luciani, so it isn't a dramatic mistake. JTD 23:36 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC)

Actually, if you do a Google search for "Albino Luciano" with the quotes (which will only return matches for the complete name, not just any page that has the word Albino and the word Luciano somewhere in it), then you only get 155 matches. "Albino Luciani", on the other hand, gets 2,610. I've changed the article to "Luciani". --Camembert

BTW, I knew "Luciano" was wrong without having to check Google, because The Fall did a song about him called "Hey Luciani". Never let it be said that I don't operate at the highest intellectual level ;-) --Camembert

I removed the following:

(there is a ritual to 'prove' the Pope is dead, utilzing wittnesses and a small silver hammer)

Though widely spoken of, this ritual, in which a senior cardinal tapped the pope on the head with a silver hammer and asked "art thou dead?" was abolished long ago. Though it is regularly referred to (and no doubt will be when John Paul II dies), it is in fact a modern myth. It no longer happens and has not occured for a long long time. FearÉIREANN 20:43 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Purely out of interest when was it abolished?

PMelvilleAustin 06:41 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I may be completely wrong but I think it may have been early to mid 20th century. I have a feeling I read somewhere that Pius XII dropped it, but it could have been a couple of popes earlier. But it certainly was gone by 1978 and I think by Vatican II. FearÉIREANN 10:51 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"Strange" changes

To Jtdirl: What's the problem with the changes?

The intrapage link to the footnote is useful. I merely forgot to use double [ ].
As I asked yesterday, I didn't understand so many "he". You clarified and I have rephrased so that future readers don't get lost with the complex subsentences.

-- Error

Medical oddness

I've straightened out some "thrombus" vs "embolism" terminology, but there's still at least one problem: "rigor mortis had set in, requiring the breaking of some bones in the late pope's body (some claimed his knee, others his back) so that he could be put in a suitable position for a lying-in-state)". Now, I'm not sure exactly who made this claim (was it Cornwell? I don't have the book at hand to check) but if they said it this way they are just wrong. Rigor mortis is a muscular phenomenon (having nothing to do with the skeleton), and while I suppose it is possible that "some bones were broken in overvigorous attempts to reposition a body in the condition of rigor mortis" but it's not quite right to say that rigor mortis would require the breaking of bones. -- Someone else 03:45, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Cornwell's book mentions claims by those dealing with the body that the re-shaping of the body for its lying-in state required the use of force which caused the breaking of bones (some sources say the Pope's knee, others his back.) I am going by memory and may be completely wrong but I think rigor mortis wears off after a set period. The trouble is that they had to get the body prepared for the lying-in-state while it was still under the affects of rigor mortis, something that normally does not affect ordinary people, who don't have to be dressed in vestments and laid out for the President of Italy to inspect. (Apparently they had to rush the procedure when either President Sandro Pertini arrived early or they were late.) My suspicion is that the bone-breaking occured as they struggled to put John Paul in his vestments while the President waited outside. - FearÉIREANN 04:25, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Yes, if they'd had the time to wait, all would have been well. Rather than looking up whether Cornwell used the word required or not, let's just rephrase to say that the presence of rigor mortis resulted in rough handling of the body resulting in the breaking of some bones. -- Someone else 04:47, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Re Error, I'm sorry but I could not make head or tail of what you did. You used a bizarre footnote command that does not exist in wik (or in any book ever published), added in strange names into sentences (Pope Paul VI. Where did he fit into a sentence that says JPI had a file in his hand from Cardinal Villot, it blew out of his hands and over the roof of Vatican?) and turned an entire paragraph around that simply said wild allegations were made into a wording that said the Vatican made the allegations. No they didn't! If they had the paragraph would said that the Vatican said . . . . They were made by numerous sources, which is why the paragraph talked about allegations being made without saying who made them.

I tried to make some sense of your changes, but they so completely changed the meeting of sentences, the contexts, indeed on occasion turned sentences around to say the exact opposite of what the original sentences said that after half an hour of trying I had to give up and simply revert. I simply cannot see what your problem was. The 'he's in the sentences were crystal clear; if a sentence takes about the Pope and Cardinal Villot, and then talks about he losing Villot's document, who else can it be but the pope? I have re-read and re-read and re-read the paragraphs and cannot see any problem. If a sentence starts off about the pope and is all about the pope, and uses 'he', it can only be about the pope. There is nobody else they could possibly be about. Please don't think I was disrepecting your edits by the revert. I spent over half an hour trying to make hear or tail of them but I simply could not. It was either revert or delete everything and start again.

PS: Hep's spelling changes were lost in the revert. I am now going to reinsert them through cut and paste. I have already reinserted Someone Else's edit. :-) FearÉIREANN 04:25, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I hope my last edit makes more sense. I didn't really understand the he's. So I have spelled it, in case more people get confused with long sentences.

Pope John Paul I#Sudden Death: The Rumours needs to be reformatted. As it is now, it seems written by committee, arguing with itsel. If the allegation-rebuttal structure is kept, it needs to be made more visible. I tried to do it.

-- Error 03:47, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Angelus of 27 August link

the link was dead. I didn't find another audio recording so I linked it to a page of the translated text.

I'm sorry the death conspiracy mumbo jumbo needs to go

or at least frame it in a way that doesn't state it as straight up fact and not the insinuation that it really is.

Actually, it would be a massive mistake to remove it. You and I may think the conspiracy theory (like most conspiracy theories) a heap of hogwash, but there are millions out there that have been hoodwinked by it. The only way to deal with that is to confront it upfront, by saying exactly what the rumours are, what they say happened, and what the evidence is. The worst way to deal with it is to do as you suggest, which is to remove it, or pussyfoot around it. Do that and you make the article seem like a whitwash, with people who believe in conspiracy theories seeing a conspiracy in your 'censorship' of the 'truth'. FearÉIREANN 19:23, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How did Litefantastic get away with removing whole paragraphs about the Yallop and Cornwell books on 20 Oct 2004? It seems to me that it is perfectly justifiable to mention/discuss major work on the different theories. To silence such mention is not NPOV (neutral point of view) but censorship. There doesn't seem to have been any discussion about this, which is interesting considering the time someone must have taken to write those paragraphs. --PeterR 16:59, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I just noticed that he made the ridiculous edit. It was absurd on just about every level.

The Yallop claims, ridiculous as they are, have to be covered. Millions of people read his book and believed it. You simply cannot ignore the one story most identified with John Paul I by millions of people.
Cornwell's book is far better sourced and far more credible. If you cover Yallop's claims, and if you have to unless you blatently censor a key part of the public story that surrounding his death, the belief that he was murdered you have to cover Cornwall's claims about what he discovered.
The paragraphs as written are clinically NPOV and factual and don't use POV language. Because of that they warrant inclusion.

I have re-inserted the section. Wikipedia isn't about censorship, it is about proper, carefully worded, accurate NPOV. The section fits all of that. I've been off wikipedia for a while and didn't realise that Lifefantasic set himself up as a censor-general of the article. FearÉIREANN 22:13, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Quote

I think the quote under "John Paul II on his predecessor" needs more info for context at least. Maurreen 00:48, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Quotation & italicisation

For some reason, every quotation in the article had been italicised. I've fixed this, removing either the italicisation or quotation where appropriate. Quotation marks should be used when directly quoting, even if the attribution for the quote has to be inferred rather than being stated directly—Mark Antony knew that his "friends, Romans [and] countrymen" would demand vengeance for Julius Caesar's death—or to indicate that this specific use of the word might carry a meaning slightly different from its dictionary defition—With "friends" like these, who needs enemies?; The Italians were worried they would "lose" the papal throne. Use italics when discussing the word itself—He preferred use to the more pretentious utilise. If we italicise a word inside quotation marks, it should be for the same reason we italicise it outside quotation marks; words should never be italicised just because they're inside quotes. Binabik80 16:07, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Aha, I was to blame, sorry. Can you post this at the Manual of Style under the heading "italics". Thanks, happy wiki-ing. --Eleassar777 17:58, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What's up with the masturbation reference?

The article states "Another wildly spread rumor that was partially correct was that he had died from strangulation while masturbating with a belt fastened around his neck. While he frequently masturbated with a belt fastened around his neck this was not the cause of death." What proof is there of the second statement? That a rumor existed is believable, but the second sentence presents it as fact that the man did regularly masturbate with a belt around his neck. How does anyone know this? If there is a source for this seemingly ridiculous claim, someone please point it out.

OK. It appears that these sentences have since been removed. Bad April Fool's Day joke?

I removed the sentences, as they seemed ridiculous to me. The user that posted them, gave no reference yet. --Eleassar777 16:18, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

POV issue with "successor of Saint Peter"

24.85.108.6 added in the "262rd successor of Saint Peter" part of the summary box in this article. I direct those interested to the discussion over at Pope John Paul II#263rd_successor_of_Saint_Peter as this is an issue to me on that article as well, and I believe that is where most of the discussion will take place.

Note that as of this moment, this line is only present in the summary boxes for the two most recent Popes. It should be present in all or none, for consistency.

To summarize my comments over on the Pope John Paul II page, it is not NPOV to definitively identify them as "successors of Saint Peter," because there are many who do not accept them as legitimate successors. I invite discussion, compromise, and consensus. For the time being, I'm changing this to say, "263rd Pope."

Somebody should either remove the lines from these two boxes or add them in for the 262 predecessors. Jdavidb 21:53, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think this is frankly an absurd and ridiculous argument. There are hundreds of disputed religious offices. The normal encyclopaedic way to deal with this is to use the definition of those who believe in a particular lineage of an office. For example, their are two archbishops of Armagh, one Anglican, one Roman Catholic, that claim lineage from St. Patrick and believe that they not the other guy, are the real successor. If you stop it being said that JPI is not the 363rd successor of St Peter, are you going to stop Archbishop Robert Eames being described as the successor to St. Patrick, because Catholics don't believe that the Anglican Eames is not the real guy, but their man, Archbishop Sean Brady is. And vice-versa; are you going to stop Brady being called the successor of St. Patrick because protestant believe that Eames is? And what about the fact that some catholics don't believe that the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury is the successor of pre-reformation archbishops. Must we delete the claim to succession of Archbishop Rowan Williams? What about rival Catholic and Anglican claimants to thousands of bishoprics and archbishoprics worldwide?

The normal solution is in lists on the Anglican Archbishop of Armagh to list the pre-reformation archbishops followed by the post-reformation protestant Archbishops. And on lists about the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh to list the pre-reformation archbishops followed by the post-reformation Catholic archbishops. Ditto with Bishops of Clogher, Archbishops of Canterbury, Archbishops of Paris and everywhere else. Calling the pope the successor of St Peter is not saying "we endorse that claim", anymore than listing Archbishop Robin Eames as a successor to St. Patrick is endorsing him over the claim of Archbishop Sean Brady. Either you remove every single claim from every single article about every single religious office at every single time there is a dispute for millennia, or you cop and simply state in an individual page 'this is what this lot claim' by putting the claim on whichever page; the Catholic claim of succession on pages about Catholic claimants, the Protestant claim of succession about Protestant claimants, the Eastern Orthodox claim of succession about Eastern Orthodox claimants, the Russian Orthodox claim about Russian Orthodox claimants, the various Jewish claims about different claimants within different strands of the Jewish faith, the Islamic claim of succession about various claimants from different brands of Islamic claimants, etc. Frankly I think the claim that stating a pope is the whatever number successor is POV is itself POV. We should simply be pluralist and say 'if this lot on this page believe they are the legitimate successors to 'x', fine. State it. It is either the same tolerance of claims for all, or denying everyone's claims everywhere in every article. And that is unworkable and ludicrous. FearÉIREANN 22:40, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Vatican inconsistencies in Death section

The Vatican raised major issues over the handling of the events surrounding his death; it lied about who found the body (it claimed a papal secretary, in fact it was later revealed that he was found by a nun in the Papal Household who had come to bring him some coffee), lied about the time, that personal property of his (his glasses, his will, documents he was working on when he died) disappeared from his bedroom and was never found. (The latter was later shown to be untrue. His possessions are retained by his sister's family.)

I did a rewrite on the Death section for style, including a reworking of the sentences above. During this, I ended up removing the information in bold because I was unable to make sense of it. I've found three possible interpretations so far:

The Vatican did not lie when it said that nothing of his was missing, since nothing of his was missing; his sister's family had it. If this is what is meant, then it seems an odd inclusion on a list of suspicious Vatican actions surrounding the Pope's death.
The Vatican said that things were missing, but they weren't. This seems unlikely to me because, frankly, I find it rather un-Vaticanish to be revealing publicly that things had gone missing from the Pope's bedroom on the same night he died of--according to the Vatican--natural causes.
Things went missing but, regardless of what the Vatican said or did not say about it, later turned up in the possession of his sister's family. This is the interpretation I got by assuming that "The latter" referred to "was never found" rather than to the whole clause--i.e., by assuming that only that his personal property "was never found ... was later shown to be untrue." In this case the statement becomes rather silly; it would be better rephrased as "The Vatican claimed that none of his property had gone missing from his room, though it was [or, The Vatican failed to disclose that some of his property had gone missing from his room, which seems rather more Vaticanish to me but isn't what the statement actually says]. Subsequently, however, it turned up in the possession of his sister's family."

The original editor might also mean that, when the discrepancies surrounding the Vatican's account of John Paul's death first came out, his personal property going missing was listed amongst them, but it was later confirmed that this property was all accounted for. If this is the case, then it would be better stated as, "A rumour that his personal property, including ... had disappeared from his room on the night of his death also heightened suspicion regarding the cause of death. This rumour was subsequently shown to be false, however; the property was accounted for in the possession of his sister's family." In such a case, the Conspiracy Theory section might be a better place for this than the Death section, but I don't think it really matters. I do think, however, that saying the Vatican covered up that things went missing from his room on the night of his death as part of a list of everything suspicious it did during the incident, then turning round afterwards and saying, "Oh, but as far as that last one goes, not really", isn't the way to go about it. Binabik80 05:14, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oh yeah, this section. I took a stab at it a while back [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_John_Paul_I&oldid=10981472) but my changes did not last. I interpret the part you bolded to mean "the Vatican said the stuff was gone, then later someone else said it was at his sister's house," which does sound like a conspiracy theory. FreplySpang (talk) 00:28, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that what happened was probably that somebody (say User A) was trying to say "the Vatican said that nothing was missing, but it was." Somebody else (User B), knowing that the stuff was actually at his sister's house, was trying to say that the claim was bullshit, but didn't do a very clear job of it. john k 02:28, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"officially" in Latin

I removed officially from the opening parenthetical phrase "(officially in Latin Ioannes Paulus PP.I)". I think the change is pretty straightforward (which is why I went ahead and did it), but I know the Latin name has been contentious recently & wanted to briefly discuss my reasons here.

Firstly, while I agree that there's benefit to including a Pope's name in Latin, the contention that this is somehow his "official" name is incorrect. When the Vatican or its representatives issue a statement, they use the Pope's name in the language that they are issuing the statement in. When the Pope issues messages (or authors books) in different languages, he even signs each of them in the language in which they are written. So clearly neither the Pope nor the Roman Catholic hierarchy consider the Latin to be anymore "official" than any other translation of the name. After all, the Spanish embassy in Washington would never issue a statement about "King John Charles", even though the statement is in English; neither would the British embassy in Madrid ever issue a statement about "Isabella II" or "Antonio Blair".

Secondly, as worded ("officially in Latin") it actually parses to mean that this is the official name in Latin; that is, that there are other, unofficial translations of the name "John Paul" in Latin, but that this is the only "official" one—so unless someone can demonstrate that JP1 was referred to by some sort of Latin translation of "Jack Paul", it looks rather silly. Binabik80 14:23, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Style - His Holiness

It is wikipedia policy to use styles on various articles to do with monarchs and title holders. One such office is the Roman Catholic pope. As a result all articles on popes begin or are meant to begin 'His Holiness'. Please do not unilaterally remove this. It simply means more work for wikipedia editors who will have to correct it back to follow the MoS and Naming Conventions agreed formats. Any removal of HH will automatically be reverted until such time as wikipedia decides to change its policy on styles. If you don't like using HH, raise it as a policy issue on the relevent pages. Don't unilaterally change it here. It will be changed back every time and may be treated as vandalism. FearÉIREANN 12:06, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Umm ... a review of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) and it's talk page would rather seem to indicate that it's Wikipedia policy (and a policy that clearly doesn't have anything like a consensus behind it at the moment) to use honorifics for living people only, not for dead ones. The page itself doesn't explicitly state it, but the relevant clauses are in present tense ("If the person has any honorifics", italics my own), implying that it applies only to the living, and the examples listed for honorifics are all of living people (John Paul II is listed, but he has been on the list since before he died). Furthermore, the talk page does explicitly state several times that honorifics should be used only for the living, not the dead.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Starting—as you state above—"all articles on popes" with "His Holiness" would seem pretty silly to me, since I very much doubt we have any idea who the first pope was to use the style (and if we do know, then that would mean it must be late enough that a good chunk of popes didn't use it). Similarly with monarchs: "His Majesty Alfred the Great" just isn't right, especially considering that English monarchs didn't start using "His" or "Her Majesty" till the Renaissance.

In fact, if we're going to start throwing around accusations of vandalism, it would seem to me that the "vandals" are the ones who keep insisting on reinserting the honorific into the beginning of the article, in contravention of Wikipedia policy according to the pages you cite above, not the people who remove it again.

Please note that I say this as someone who strongly supports the use of honorifics for living people and the use of titles for all people where appropriate, and disagree with pretty much every aspect of User:Ford/proposals. Binabik80 15:12, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think we should be careful about our accusations of vandalism. To me, vandalism is bad-faith editing. Misguided good-faith editing is not vandalism. Just an idea to keep people's hackles down. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 15:22, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You're absolutely right, and I apologise. A too-quick reaction to what I felt was a too-quick accusation. Binabik80 16:29, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Successor

Replaced "The Servant of God John Paul II" by "John Paul II"

The Legacy of Pope John Paul I

At the end of the penultimate section of the article, there is mention of the cause for beatification of John Paul I. The discussion is rather misleading in my opinion in the sense that according to the article it can be inferred that the Vatican has yet to accept or open the cause and that the cause is not active. This is in fact misleading. According to "The Smiling Pope," the definitive biography of John Paul I: "Bishop Vincenzo Savio of Belluno-Feltre announced that research to promote the Pope's beatification had begun on the local level [on 26 August 2002]," and that "the Vatican's Congregation for Sainthood Causes gave its consent to begin the canonical process on the holiness of the Servant of God, Pope John Paul I [on 10 June 2003]." So in fact the cause is indeed opened, approved by the Vatican, and well underway. And this brings me to a final point. I notice that at the bottom of the page there is a predecessor/successor bar with "Paul VI" before "Pope, 1978" and "The Servant of God John Paul II" after. The fact is that both Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II are all Servants of God as all three have causes for beatification open at present. Therefore they should be styled the same way, have it mentioned in the article (as it is mentioned at the beginning of the John Paul II article), have the "Servants of God" link at the bottom (which is present at the bottom of the John Paul II article), and in fact be listed as such on the "Servants of God" article.

One user keeps continually adding in that damned 'Servant of God' stuff. It does not belong there. The link is only to the name of the next or previous pope. Styles, titles, etc do not belong in any such box. Every time they are inserted they will be automatically and instantly removed. FearÉIREANN

\^(talk) 21:19, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree, the title "Servant of God" should probably not be in the predecessor/successor bar at the bottom of the pope's pages, but rather simply the name of the Pope in order to avoid confusion. But if someone keeps on insisting may I remind that someone that he should be uniform and list not just John Paul II as such but John Paul I and Paul VI as such too, since they are also Servants of God? Needless to say, it certainly should be mentioned in their article if they are Servants of God, as is mentioned in the John Paul II article but not mentioned in the Paul VI and the [misleading] John Paul I articles. Also, the link to the Servants of God article should be provided in the category box at the bottom of not just John Paul II article but the others, too (and needless to say the names should be listed in the Servants of God article itself). I love John Paul II, too, but I also like John Paul I and Paul VI. Seeing that this is an encyclopaedia and my personal likes are beside the point, as they should be, I think one cannot neglect a fact in one article and state it in another article just because one died "long ago" in 1978 and the other died recently in 2005. Lastly, I am no good at this editing stuff and would very much appreciate someone to take up this rather minor cause. Thanks.

I have made a minor update to the article at the end of the "Legacy of Pope John Paul I" section in order to clear up the previously misleading speculation on the current status of his beatification process. I hope this helps and that no one minds. I also added him to the Servants of God category.

I have added a Patriarch of Venice predecessor/successor box. It seemed missing and I think it enhances the article nicely, albeit, in a rather small way. That was my first template and it took me a while to figure out how to do it but I hope it looks nice. Any feedback is welcome. (June 21, 2005)

Beatification process

I have updated the information concerning the beatification process of John Paul I and it has already been reverted to its former misleading ways within hours. Here is what the reverter is claiming:

1. The beatification process for John Paul I has not "reached the Roman Curia," when indeed it has.

2. John Paul I is not a Servant of God, when indeed he is.

Here is what is actually correct:

1. On June 10, 2003 the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, a congregation of the Roman Curia at the Vatican, gave its approval to open the beatification process for John Paul I, with the diocesan process having subsequently began on November 23 of the same year.

2. Because his beatification process is open he is a Servant of God.

These facts are indisputable. Change them or make them unclear if one wants but that is only being dishonest. For reference, read "The Smiling Pope" or visit any number of websites. (June 17, 2005)

It seems to have reverted again back to my original revision. This is what it should generally read like:

"A number of campaigns have been started to canonize Pope John Paul I. Miracles have been attributed to him. On June 10, 2003 the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints gave its permission for the opening of the beatification process of Pope John Paul I, Servant of God. The "diocesan phase" of this process began in Belluno on November 23, 2003."

Edits in grammar and style are fine by me, but to revert this back to the "whether it reaches the Roman Curia is yet to be seen" nonsense is to be avoided at all costs. (June 17, 2005)

Patriarch of Venice

Yesterday I added a Patriarch of Venice predecessor/successor box and today it was reverted as "linkspam." My first question is why, then, have an Archbishop of Krakow predecessor/successor box for John Paul II; why, then, have curial predecessor/successor boxes for Benedict XVI? And so on and so forth? Why? Does the reverter think that the See of Venice is less important than the See of Krakow? Or that since he died "long ago" in 1978 he's somehow not important? If he does than I suggest he examines Church history, because indeed the Patriarchy of Venice has been the testing grounds for many Popes; three alone in the 20th century (with one Patriarch actually being sandwiched by two Popes). The See of Krakow has been the testing grounds for ONE Pope; the Great John Paul II, but nevertheless just one. Lastly, I want to add that in my opinion the John Paul I page is very much lagging behind when compared to the Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI pages. I believe my addition was a worthy enhancement and I will continue to contribute to this page and to others, not as a "spammer" (as I have never been one), but as a helper to all those in search of good information on the Popes. (June 21, 2005)

Succession box

Could whomever keeps inserting The Servant of God before John Paul II's name in the succession box please stop doing so. Those boxes are only there to link an office or title holder to their predecessor and successor. They are not intended to contain any titles, styles, or other terms that are not in themselves part of their name or regnal name. Servant of God should no more be in that box than should His Holiness, His Eminence, Venerable, Blessed or any other designation that is not part of the person's name or regnal name. Such designations belong in the text of the article where they can be explained and contextualised. Added in succession boxes where they cannot be explained or contextualised, they can be misread as indicating that Wikipedia is endorsing a POV. Benedict's predecessor was John Paul II and so that is all that should be in the box. Apart from anything else, he was not a Servant of God during his lifetime so should not be referred to as such when his regnal name is being used as a link. FearÉIREANN\^(talk) 21:29, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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