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Copyright © The Ottawa CitizenSt. Sulpice Church lies at the end of a street filled with high-end boutiques, boulangeries and bistros in the heart of the Latin Quarter, one of the more legendary neighbourhoods of Paris. The Latin Quarter was Hemingway's Paris neighbourhood back in the 1920s and '30s; these days, it's full of boutique hotels and couturiers such as Prada and Isse Myaki.There's only about one novelist left who could afford to live around here, but Dan Brown doesn't. He just immortalized the place in The Da Vinci Code, the No. 1 bestselling novel of all time.The church of St. Sulpice, itself, is undergoing some sort of medieval makeover: On a drizzly, overcast afternoon,scaffolding hangs off its 400-year-old exterior like so many pickup sticks. One might speculate St. Sulpice, to paraphrase Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, is getting ready for its close-up.
One would be mistaken.
Since its publication in
2003, The Da Vinci Code has aroused passionate debate -- among readers,
clergy, academics and pundits -- like no book in recent memory. Readers
lovedit. . Doctrinaire Christians were mortified by it. Two years after it came out, the Vatican denounced it as nothing but -- to paraphrase Tennessee William's favourite heroine, Blanche Dubois -- lies and mendacity. If the novel had been dead as a form of cultural communication, The Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter books -- both middle-brow genre books told from an unabashedly pagan point of view -- resurrected it. Now ahigh-profile Sony Pictures adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, directed by Oscar-winner Ron Howard and starring multiple Oscar-winner Tom Hanks, is poised to open in 69 countries around the world on May 17. Question: Can Ron Howard's film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code hope to inspire the passion aroused by the novel, or is it destined, like many a literary sensation before it, to end up just one more $100-million-plus tentpole movie so watered down from its source material that even its enemies feel more sorry for it than enraged? The ardour with which scholars, book lovers, pagans and Christian bloggers have debated the novel has been focused anew on two new subjects: the reactions of the various locations to requests from the producers for permission to shoot scenes there, and new revelations, following a New York Times article last August, thatSony Pictures......
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With each week that Dan Brown's blockbuster, The Da Vinci Code, remains one of the most talked-about books in the world, one can almost sense the growing apprehension of the Vatican.The innumerable editions of the book and more than 40 million copies already in print surely must seem like a bad dream to those who feel targeted by Brown's allegations of chicanery and skullduggery within the inner sanctums of the Holy See.Many critics slammed the book even as it consolidated its position atop the New York Times reports list and Amazon.com's sales charts. Peter Millar, writing in the Times of London, considered The Da Vinci Code as "without doubt, the silliest, most inaccurate,ill-informed, stereotype-driven, cloth-eared, cardboard-cutout-populated piece of pulp fiction I have read."
Archbishop
Angelo Amato, a high-level Vatican official, dismissed Brown's
best-seller as a work "full of calumnies, offenses, and historical
theological errors." On the Catholic Answers website www.catholic.com,
the question was posed: "Should other Christians be concerned aboutthe
book?" The answer was clear and unequivocal: "Definitely. 
Copyright © TelegraphAfter enduring howls in the night and creaking staircases for the past three years, an Italian family is preparing to sue the previous owners of their house for not telling them it was haunted. Gaetano Bastianelli, 57, and his wife Stefania paid €120,000 (£94,000) for the modern home in the Umbrian town of Spoleto in 2005 - encouraged by the fact that all the furniture and fittings were left by the owners, right down to the coffee cups. "We considered it the deal of the century," said Mr Bastianelli.The couple claim they were unaware that the house in Santo Chiodo road had been built close to the disused Pozzi Ginoricemetery, or that strange goings-on at the address during the 1970s had necessitated an exorcism - and prompted a visit from Perugia University's paranormal research team."The ghosts started their haunting on the first night," said Mr Bastianelli, a former long-distance lorry driver. "I woke suddenly at around one or two in the morning. There was waterseeping from under the bathroom door.
"The hot
water tap was pouring out boiling water and the room was full of steam.
My wife was stunned, because she had turned off everything before going
to bed."
He claimed that by next morning, malevolent spirits had left "luminous green mould all over the walls".
After that things got
worse. 
Copyright © Daily MailThis fiery figure is being hailed as Pope John Paul II making an appearance beyond the grave. The image, said by believers to show the Holy Father with his right hand raised in blessing, was spotted during a ceremony in Poland to mark the second anniversary of his death.Details appeared on the Vatican News Service, a TV station in Rome which specialises in religious news broadcasts. Service director Jarek Cielecki, a Polish priest andclose friend of John Paul II, travelled to Poland after hearing an onlooker had photographed the image.Father Cielecki said he was convinced the picture showed the former pontiff. "You can see the image of a person in the flames and I think it is the servant of God, Pope John Paul II," he said.
The pictures
werebeing broadcast continuously on Italian TV and also posted on
religious websites, some of which crashed as thousands logged on to see
for themselves the eerie figure formed by the flames.
The bonfire was lit during
a service at Beskid Zywiecki, close to John Paul's birthplace at
Katowice, southern Poland, on April 2 - the second anniversary of his
death.
Hundreds hadattended the
ceremony. 
