This from the Guardian newspaper, London, UK
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3938809,00.html
Gunmaker's Jubilee has the Vatican over a barrel
Philip Willan in Rome
Tuesday December 7, 1999
Beretta, the Italian gun manufacturer, has decided to name two of its new products in honour of the Jubilee, the Roman Catholic celebration of the millennium. The Vatican is furious.
The two 12-bore double-barrelled shotguns are presented in the December issue of the specialist magazine Arms and Shooting under the headline: The Pope would like them.
Jubilee and Jubilee II are both decorated by hand and link the name of the historic north Italian gunmaker with Catholic celebrations for the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ.
This marriage of the sacred and the profane has not amused Misna, a Catholic missionary news agency, which said the naming of the guns revealed a total lack of understanding of the meaning of the Jubilee and a failure to heed Pope John Paul's repeated calls for disarmament.
Massimo Vallino, the editor of Arms and Shooting, said: "The Jubilee of the year 2000 is being celebrated by Beretta with an 'over and under' and a conventional double-barrelled shotgun decorated for the occasion with ultra-refined engravings, extraordinary woods and apparently minor details, which, in reality, make all the difference."
He went on: "It should be quite clear that we didn't want to provoke or make fun of anybody.
"The missionaries are right if they are referring to the arms trade, but these are sports products: the 'over and under' is very similar to the gun that won the gold and bronze for Italy in the 1996 Olympics."
Mr Vallino insisted that the Pope, who used to be a keen sportsman, would appreciate the guns.
For Misna, however, Jubilee and Jubilee II, which cost more than £5,000 each to buy, constitute the worst possible way to mark the Jubilee.
The money would be better used to compensate the populations of the developing world, "who have had to spit blood and live in poverty in order to pay the debts contracted by their governments in order to buy arms, including the vast range produced by Beretta", the news agency said.
Misna expressed the hope that no one would celebrate the birth of Jesus by buying a Beretta Jubilee, but that prospective buyers would send an equivalent amount of money to help write off third world debt or finance the retraining of child soldiers in Sierra Leone.
Michele Serra, a commentator for the Rome daily newspaper La Repubblica, disagreed that the guns' names caused offence.
"Compared to the words 'In God We Trust' printed on dollar bills, the Jubilee shotgun is really the most innocent of inventions," Mr Serra said.
Turning filthy lucre into elegant firearms was, he suggested, "a laudable form of money-laundering".
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Gun Control: The proposition that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own panty hose, is more acceptable than allowing that same woman to defend herself with a firearm.
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3938809,00.html
Gunmaker's Jubilee has the Vatican over a barrel
Philip Willan in Rome
Tuesday December 7, 1999
Beretta, the Italian gun manufacturer, has decided to name two of its new products in honour of the Jubilee, the Roman Catholic celebration of the millennium. The Vatican is furious.
The two 12-bore double-barrelled shotguns are presented in the December issue of the specialist magazine Arms and Shooting under the headline: The Pope would like them.
Jubilee and Jubilee II are both decorated by hand and link the name of the historic north Italian gunmaker with Catholic celebrations for the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ.
This marriage of the sacred and the profane has not amused Misna, a Catholic missionary news agency, which said the naming of the guns revealed a total lack of understanding of the meaning of the Jubilee and a failure to heed Pope John Paul's repeated calls for disarmament.
Massimo Vallino, the editor of Arms and Shooting, said: "The Jubilee of the year 2000 is being celebrated by Beretta with an 'over and under' and a conventional double-barrelled shotgun decorated for the occasion with ultra-refined engravings, extraordinary woods and apparently minor details, which, in reality, make all the difference."
He went on: "It should be quite clear that we didn't want to provoke or make fun of anybody.
"The missionaries are right if they are referring to the arms trade, but these are sports products: the 'over and under' is very similar to the gun that won the gold and bronze for Italy in the 1996 Olympics."
Mr Vallino insisted that the Pope, who used to be a keen sportsman, would appreciate the guns.
For Misna, however, Jubilee and Jubilee II, which cost more than £5,000 each to buy, constitute the worst possible way to mark the Jubilee.
The money would be better used to compensate the populations of the developing world, "who have had to spit blood and live in poverty in order to pay the debts contracted by their governments in order to buy arms, including the vast range produced by Beretta", the news agency said.
Misna expressed the hope that no one would celebrate the birth of Jesus by buying a Beretta Jubilee, but that prospective buyers would send an equivalent amount of money to help write off third world debt or finance the retraining of child soldiers in Sierra Leone.
Michele Serra, a commentator for the Rome daily newspaper La Repubblica, disagreed that the guns' names caused offence.
"Compared to the words 'In God We Trust' printed on dollar bills, the Jubilee shotgun is really the most innocent of inventions," Mr Serra said.
Turning filthy lucre into elegant firearms was, he suggested, "a laudable form of money-laundering".
------------------
Gun Control: The proposition that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own panty hose, is more acceptable than allowing that same woman to defend herself with a firearm.
