Recap: In an article about Italy last week, Ian Fisher of the New York Times claimed the Pope has displayed “outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq.” I asked if readers of this happy Corner could provide me with as much as a single instance in which the Pontiff has denounced the war. Sean Gleeson linked to my post, issuing the same challenge to readers of his website.

Results: One reader–count ‘em, one–met the challenge, referring Sean and me to a piece that William McGurn published in the Wall Street Journal on March 14, 2003: “If there were any doubts left about where Pope John Paul II stands on war with Iraq, they ought to have been answered by his characterization of any military effort against Saddam as a ‘crime against humanity.’”

Before Sean and I award this reader the Sean Gleeson Researcher of the Century Award, however, we note one problem. The Pope never said any such thing.

“I got the quote from the Telegraph [a British newspaper],” Bill McGurn told me when I called him, “and as soon as my piece came out Father Neuhaus [editor of First Things] got in touch to tell me it was wrong. I asked the guys at the Telegraph. They admitted they’d gotten it wrong. They were garbling a different statement.”

On March 28, 2003, Bill published a correction, combining it with a pointed meditation on the Pope and just war doctrine.

Which takes Sean and me back where we started. The New York Times may have convinced itself that John Paul II is “outspoken [in] opposition to the war in Iraq,” but neither that newspaper’s fine reporters nor anyone else can quote the Pontiff condemning the war, because no such quotation exists.