You can't make this stuff up

At the end of his tour, the Pope said something simply amazing:

Benedict defended the church's often bloody campaign to Christianize indigenous people, saying Latin American Indians had been "silently longing" to become Christians when Spanish and Portuguese conquerors took over their native lands centuries ago.

"In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture," he told the bishops.

As the friend who sent me this said,

"I'm ... speechless. What planet does this man live on?"