by our Rome correspondent AN Italian cardinal has compared the controversial Swiss-born theologian Professor Hans Kung with the anti-Christ, "an excellent writer, noble and well-intentioned but radically pagan".
Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, the outspoken Archbishop of Bologna in northern Italy, was reacting to Kung's latest book Project for World Ethics, in which the Anti-Christ "empties the gospel message of its substance and exalts a form of ethics and love for humanity presented as Christian values".
In his new work, Fr Kung makes three fundamental points — humanity will not survive without international consensus on ethics; there will be no peace in the world until there is peace among religions; and there will be no religious peace without inter-religious dialogue.
Speaking to the Italian weekly news magazine Espresso this week, Fr Kung hit back at the cardinal's observations. "A reChristianisation in the Roman Catholic sense as John Paul 11 sees it, would be a tragedy. I don't belie\ c it is possible".