What Did ‘Pope’ John Paul II Really Say? That John the Baptist Would Protect ‘Islam’ or ‘This Land’?

Vatican changes official text 26 years later…

What Did ‘Pope’ John Paul II Really Say? That John the Baptist Would Protect ‘Islam’ or ‘This Land’?

The false pope John Paul II at Wadi al-Kharrar in Jordan on Mar. 21, 2000
(image: REUTERS/Ali Jarekji/Bridgeman Images)

On Mar. 21, 2000, the Polish apostate bishop Karol Wojtyla — better known as ‘Pope’ and ‘Saint’ John Paul II (r. 1978-2005) — was visiting the nation of Jordan as part of a larger pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

That day he visited what is held to be the site of Christ’s baptism at the River Jordan, and after he had recited a special prayer for the occasion, he gave some concluding remarks of gratitude and greeting and ended with these words (underlining added):

I will keep all the people of Jordan – Christians and Muslims – in my prayers, especially the sick and the elderly.

With gratitude I invoke abundant blessings upon His Highness the King and upon the whole nation.

God bless you all! God bless Jordan!

May Saint John Baptist protect Islam and all the people of Jordan, and all who partecipated [sic] in this celebration, a memorable celebration. I’m very grateful to all of you.

Thank you very much.

Among traditionalists, the underlined words generated big controversy back in the day. The ‘Pope’ had asked St. John the Baptist to protect the evil religion of the Mohammedans!

Similar to our present time, Novus Ordo apologists jumped to the defense of their ‘Holy Father’ and tried to find ways to spin his words or excuse them somehow. If memory serves right, there was nonetheless no one who claimed that the transcript was wrong, that Wojtyla hadn’t actually uttered the reported words.

This, however, appears to be the claim being made now.

Even though, for roughly 26 years, the Vatican had reported John Paul’s words as being “May St. John the Baptist protect Islam”, we now find that the transcript available on the official Vatican web site has been changed. John Paul II’s words now read (underlining added):

I will keep all the people of Jordan – Christians and Muslims – in my prayers, especially the sick and the elderly.

With gratitude I invoke abundant blessings upon His Highness the King and upon the whole nation.

God bless you all! God bless Jordan!

May Saint John Baptist protect this land and all the people of Jordan, and all who partecipated [sic] in this celebration, a memorable celebration. I’m very grateful to all of you.

Thank you very much.

So the Vatican quietly replaced the word “Islam” with the phrase “this land”, thereby eliminating the entire controversy. The controversial bidding for the protection of a religion that denies Christ was turned into an unobjectionable desire for the protection of the Jordanian land.

Let’s look at screenshots of the different versions. The first one is from 2000 — the original published text (archived here):

Although the Vatican has updated its web site design since then, the text remained the same verbatim (incl. the spelling error in “partecipated”) until very recently. The following screenshot shows the text as it appeared on the Vatican web site on Oct. 15, 2025 (archived here):

What it says now, and what it has been saying since at least Apr. 15 of this year (archived here), is the following:

It is not clear exactly when this revision took place, but, based on the screenshots above, it must have been anywhere from October 2025 to April 2026.

Why the Vatican would revise this transcript over 25 years after the fact is unclear, but it’s certainly conceivable that it was simply a transcription error all this time, and it’s finally been corrected. After all, it would only be right and fair to correct a mistake after it’s been discovered, especially when dealing with a matter so serious as the public words of a ‘Pope’.

One can accept this explanation, but then some other questions must be raised.

If the Vatican was so intent on ensuring that a ‘canonized’ ‘Pope’ would not be misunderstood, or that he would not be calumniated and tainted with a fake scandal, why then would they change the transcript quietly? Wouldn’t it be just as important then to make the public aware of the correction? What good is a corrected transcript if the public is not informed of its existence, if people are not made aware that there was a scandalous error that has now been duly corrected? Why not call a press conference or at least publish an announcement in the daily Vatican news bulletin? “No man lighteth a candle, and putteth it in a hidden place, nor under a bushel; but upon a candlestick, that they that come in, may see the light” (Lk 11:33).

Furthermore, if this was really about correcting a genuine mistake, why then was the obviously misspelled word “partecipated” not corrected as well in the process? That is a mistake any automatic spell checker will find.

We must be clear that this is not merely an online/internet issue, as if “Islam” were merely found on the web site of the Vatican. No, it was also published this way in Vatican print publications.

The book Alle Radici Della Fede e Della Chiesa (“At the Roots of the Faith and the Church”), published by the Vatican (L’Osservatore Romano) in 2000, contains photos and speeches of John Paul II’s trip to the Holy Land. On page 37, we find translated into Italian his remarks at Wadi al-Kharrar. One need not know Italian to be able to see that there, too, St. John the Baptist is asked to “protect Islam” (protegga l’Islam) and not “this land” (questa terra):

But, just what did John Paul II actually say? Surely there must be an audiovisual recording of the event that will clarify the matter.

Indeed, yes, there is footage of the audio/video available on YouTube. The problem is that the quality of the recording is quite poor. Wojtyla had a strong Polish accent, and his pronunciation of “this land” sounds very much like “Islam”, at least when it’s windy — and it was. Deciphering the false pope’s words from observing the movement of his lips isn’t an option either, as the camera cut away at that precise moment and a big microphone was blocking the view anyway.

The following video compilation, provided by an anti-sedevacantist YouTube user, provides various excerpts of John Paul II saying “this land” with his Polish accent. It then compares them to the audio of what he said at Wadi al-Kharrar. The result, in the opinion of the present writer, is inconclusive. But see — hear — for yourself (direct link here):

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(This and other topics are also discussed in the recently-released TRADCAST EXPRESS 225 podcast episode, by the way.)

Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that he really said “this land”, why did no one in the Vatican know about this? Why did no one notice that the transcript was wrong, for over two decades? And how was the transcription error even made in the first place?

The answer would have to be that everyone believed it was simply not out of character for John Paul II to say something so egregiously scandalous as “May St. John the Baptist protect Islam”. After over 20 years of ecumenical and interreligious shenanigans by Wojtyla, including his blasphemy against St. John the Baptist in a Lutheran church in 1983 and his public kissing of the Koran in 1999, no one had cause to bat an eye when it was reported that he had invoked the protection of St. John the Baptist for the religion of Mohammed. It was basically par for the course.

And that alone speaks volumes, regardless of what he actually did say.

Image source: Bridgeman Images (Ali Jarekji; cropped)
License: rights-managed