The Vatican this morning downplayed threats made to Pope John Paul II during his ongoing visit to Croatia, saying the Roman Catholic leader's travels were often met with fraudulent attack warnings.
"It is not unusual that during pope's trips there are warnings or rumours of potential assassination attempts. The credibility of these information is often very doubtful or completely false," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro Valls told journalists travelling with the pope during his five-day visit to the Balkan state.
Navarro Valls said the Vatican would pass on all information to relevant authorities, but added: "I can assert that in the 100 trips the pope has taken up until today, we have never considered it necessary to modify the itinerary of his trip."
Two Croatian news agencies, the Catholic news agency IKA and the HINA news agency, each received on Friday an e-mail message, signed by the "el Mudjehedin Islamic Front", threatening to assassinate the pope during his stay in Croatia.
The message, entitled "message to infidels," was sent in the name of Allah, HINA reported.
Croatia's interior ministry said that the message had a Bosnian address and was apparently sent from abroad, adding that it had requested international police assistance in the matter.
Navarro-Valls was speaking to journalists in a plane carrying the Pope from the northern town of Rijeka to Osijek, in the east, where he was due to give a liturgy to a crowd of around 100,000 pilgrims.
It is the pontiff's third trip to the predominantly Roman Catholic country.
He is based in Rijeka, and has already visited the southern Adriatic city of Dubrovnik.
After the Osijek service, the pope was later on Saturday to go nearby Djakovo. He is to conclude his stay in the Balkan country with a visit Monday to Zadar, also on the Adriatic coast, from where he will fly back to Rome.
AFP