CORRECTION OR BACKTRACKING?

Catholic World News has issued a correction for their "mistranslation" of a Vatican newspaper article, making it clear that the Vatican was criticizing Sri Lanka for not accepting Israel’s help, not Israel for refusing to give aid to Sri Lanka (which of course it gave). I'm skeptical about whether this was an honest mistake or whether the Vatican is trying to extricate itself from a poo-poo storm.

Vatican paper raps Sri Lanka on Israeli aid (correction) :Vatican, Dec. 30 (CWNews.com) - The following is a corrected version of a story that appeared on CWNews.com earlier this week, in which a crucial error in translation caused a serious misinterpretation of the news. CWNews apologizes for the error.

Vatican, Dec. 28 (CWNews.com) - The Vatican newspaper has denounced a decision by Sri Lanka to reject emergency aid offered by the Israeli government. Sri Lanka declined the Israeli aid because it would have been furnished by a military team. Calling for “a radical and dramatic change of perspective” among people “too often preoccupied with making war,” L’Osservatore Romano chastised the government of the stricken Asian nation for putting unnecessary restrictions on an Israeli offer to furnish medical help.

The Vatican paper observed that in what “should be a time for unconditional solidarity,” some world leaders seem incapable of escaping a “small-minded approach that restricts their horizons.” The suffering caused by the tsunami has created “a mass of deaths, across borders,” L’Osservatore observed. The fact that the devastation swept across different societies, cultures, and nations should help to reinforce the universal perspective, the paper suggested.