Jenna Peters, 10, of Ferndale, Mich., sports a witch's hat after buyng a copy of 'Harry Potter (news - web sites), Order of the Phoenix,' Saturday, June 21, 2003, in Madison Heights, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Warner)
HARRY POTTER has come under attack from soul-sucking dementors and basilisks, but he faces his most formidable adversary yet in the form of the Pope.
A letter written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he was elected Pope in April, condemns the boy wizard as a potentially corrupting influence on children.
The Cardinal, then the late Pope John Paul II’s “enforcer” as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, revealed his views in a letter to the author of Harry Potter — Good or Evil?, a book published in Germany. The Cardinal appeared to sympathise with Gabriele Kuby’s thesis that Harry Potter corrupts the young, distorting their understanding of the battle between good and evil. “It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly,” he...
