It worked for a thousand years, even more. So now the Vatican has been touched by the soul of Saddam Hussein. He should not be executed, said Cardinal Renato Martino, the prelate in the entourage of Pope Benedict who is responsible for the Council on Justice and Peace, that is, matters of justice and peace apparently everywhere. Martino had long been a critic of the Iraq war. But he also established his certified anti-American credentials when he absorbed the spirit of the United Nations as the Vatican's emissary during a 16 year stint. (See this article by Michael Novak that evokes Martino's career vis-a-vis the U.S.) There's much more on Martino in Il Foglio, Italy's absolutely best daily newspaper. Forget Corriere. Remember Il Foglio. In the statement speaking if not for the Holy Father than for the Holy See, there's a lot of stuff about how nobody should take a human life. It must end naturally, the pronuciatmento asserts, as if this were a debate on abortion and Saddam were an innocent fetus in his mother's womb. Actually, the Vatican had been soft on Saddam's regime in order to buffer the Chaldean Catholic Church during and against the worst of his depradations. Here is a republication of a devastating article by Sandro Magister, first run before the war in November 2002. It's titled, "Saddam Hussein masacres Shiite Muslims, as Vatican looks away." Is it too provocative to ask if the pro-abortion folk also don't want Saddam executed? One cannot help thinking that it is really a shame that the church got religion, so to speak, about the sanctity of all human life so late in its history.