ROME – Amid the usual cascade of news out of the Vatican in recent days was a curious item, which, among other things, touches upon the ever-vexed matter of papal security. It involves the arrest of a U.S. fugitive captured in St. Peter’s Square, armed with three knives, just before Pope Francis’s regular Wednesday General Audience on April 10.
53-year-old Moises Tejada, who has been classified as “extremely violent” by the New York State Department of Corrections and its Office of Special investigations on the basis of convictions for robbery and kidnapping, was flagged by Italian police that morning for suspicious behavior and detained, which led to the discovery of the three eight-inch knives in his possession.
