Is this Pope John Paul II waving from beyond the grave? Vatican TV director says yes
By NICK PISA - More by this author »
 
Last updated at 21:21pm on 15th October 2007
 
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This fiery figure is being hailed as Pope John Paul II making an appearance beyond the grave.

The image, said by believers to show the Holy Father with his right hand raised in blessing, was spotted during a ceremony in Poland to mark the second anniversary of his death.

Details appeared on the Vatican News Service, a TV station in Rome which specialises in religious news broadcasts.

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Burned into the memory: The image that appeared in the bonfire, Tending his flock: Pope John Paul II at an audience in 2001 (right)



Service director Jarek Cielecki, a Polish priest and close friend of John Paul II, travelled to Poland after hearing an onlooker had photographed the image.

Father Cielecki said he was convinced the picture showed the former pontiff.

"You can see the image of a person in the flames and I think it is the servant of God, Pope John Paul II," he said.

The pictures were being broadcast continuously on Italian TV and also posted on religious websites, some of which crashed as thousands logged on to see for themselves the eerie figure formed by the flames.

The bonfire was lit during a service at Beskid Zywiecki, close to John Paul's birthplace at Katowice, southern Poland, on April 2 - the second anniversary of his death.

Hundreds had attended the ceremony. Gregorz Lukasik, the Polish man who took the photographs, said: "It was only afterwards when I got home and looked at the pictures that I realised I had something.

"I showed them to my brother and sister and they, like me, were convinced the flames had formed the image of Pope John Paul II.

"I was so happy with the picture that I showed it to our local bishop who said that Pope John Paul had made many pilgrimages during his life and he was still making them in death."

That's what I thought.

People take every image and turn it into Our Lady or other famous personage in the Church. They make themselves look like idiots to the world.

Yeah! Earlier this year, over in Houston at some school, this lady who worked in the cafeteria, was claiming that the grease stain on the pizza pan she was washing was an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary! She took it home and made a small shrine to it in her front yard! They even had a rosary gathering! (Oh well, at least they said their Rosary that day!) The lady had to give it back to the HISD school though. But when she returned it they had a procession following it as it was being taken back to the school! I was actually thinking that they were going to build a chapel in honor of the apparition and name it Our Lady of Pepperoni!  :roll-laugh1:

I believe it was the Pope. But it's scary though. It seems to me that the Pope is burning! :shocked: