Pope asks World Leaders for Immediate Suspension of Death Penalty for One Year:-21-Feb-2016
Pope Francis, who has repeatedly called for an end to the death penalty, today (Sunday February 21, 2016) proposed that Catholic leaders suspend the practice for a year to mark the Holy Year of Mercy. "I make an appeal to the conscience of all rulers, so that we can achieve an international consensus for the abolition of the death penalty," the Pope said in his Sunday address in St. Peter's Square. "And I propose to those among them who are Catholic to make a courageous and exemplary gesture: that no sentence is executed in this Holy Year of Mercy." The Pope launched the Jubilee Year of Mercy on December 8, 2015. The church's formal yearlong push for mercy and forgiveness is set to continue through November 20, 2016, when the feast of Christ the king will be celebrated. Pope also voiced his support today for an international conference taking place tomorrow (on Monday February 22, 2016) in Rome called “A World Without the Death Penalty”, saying he hoped the conference would bring renewed energy to the mission to end capital punishment. The Pope underlined the possibility of redemption for offenders and a "criminal justice open to the hope of reintegration into society." "The commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' has absolute value and applies to both the innocent and the guilty," he said today. His predecessors Pope Benedict XVI (Pope Emeritus) and Saint Pope John Paul II were staunch...
Pope Tells Priests—Do Not Scold Sinners During Confession. Special Confessors Recruited.-10-Feb-2016
During this Holy Year of Mercy, which began on Dec. 8, 2015 and ends on Nov. 20, 2016, Pope Francis instructed all priests to show a more merciful face to sinners. He was addressing a large group of priests from around the world on Tuesday February 9, 2016. Many of them using headphones for translation, gathered in an ornate hall of the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican to hear Francis stress the welcoming image he wants faithful to have of their church and how priests should act when hearing confessions. The pope lamented that many people abandon confession because priests scold them or pry for embarrassing details. Confessors "aren't called to judge, with a sense of superiority" but instead welcome penitents with "open arms," Francis said. "It's not with the cudgel of judgment that we will succeed in bringing the lost sheep back to the fold," he said. He also recruited special corps of around 1,000 confessors is known as the Missionaries of Mercy. Reflecting the far reach of the Catholic Church in ministering to its 1.2 billion flock, they will be traveling this year to countries including United Arab Emirates, Egypt, China, Burundi and Israel. One priest will head to the far Canadian north; another will use a camper to reach Catholics living in remote parts of the Australian countryside. They play important roles in the Holy Year of Mercy, an initiative of Francis to encourage a more forgiving mentality i...
Leonardo DiCaprio meets Pope Francis. Then these things happened----30-Jan-2016
World-famous actor Leonardo DiCaprio finally met a person more famous than him. Oscar nominee DiCaprio enjoyed a private 15-minute meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday, January 28, 2016. Leo arrived at 11:15 a.m. local time and was accompanied by his father, George DiCaprio, and the global fundraising chair for the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, Milutin Gatsby. "Your Holiness, thank you for granting me this private audience with you," DiCaprio said in Italian as he arrived in the Apostolic Palace and kissed the pope's ring. The two discussed Leonardo's charitable foundation and how they can work together on climate change. Speaking in English, Leonardo offered the pontiff a book of works by the 15th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch and showed him the reproduction of the artist's "Garden of Earthly Delights" that hung over his crib when he was as an infant. The book depicts Adam and Eve in the first panel, a landscape in the center panel, and a vision of hell in the third panel. "My father hung it on my crib. As a child I didn't quite understand what it all meant, but through my child's eyes it represented a planet, the utopia we had been given, the overpopulation, excesses," the actor said, "and the third panel we see a blackened sky that represents so much to me of what's going in in the environment." The Oscar nominee gave him a check from the environmental philanthropy he started in 1998 to use for a char...
Supreme Court Sets Date for the case of Little Sisters of the Poor against Obamacare Mandate-29-Jan-2016
The Supreme Court has set the date for oral arguments for Little Sisters of the Poor’s challenge to the Obama HHS mandate. The nation’s highest court will hear debate from attorneys representing the Catholic religious order and the Obama administration on Wednesday, March 23 at 10 a.m. The Little Sisters of the Poor are asking the nation’s highest court to ensure they do not have to comply with Obamacare’s abortion mandate. The mandate compels religious groups to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions. Without relief, the Little Sisters would face millions of dollars in IRS fines because they cannot comply with the government’s mandate that they give their employees free access to contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs. Previously, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily protected the Little Sisters from the mandate. The Little Sisters then went before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver to extend that protection, but a panel of the appeals court ruled against them. Eventually the full appeals court ruled in its favor but the Obama administration appealed. The Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of Catholic nuns who care for the elderly poor, urged the Supreme Court to protect them from $70 million dollars in government fines for refusing to violate their Catholic faith. This is the second time the Sisters have been forced to ask the Supreme Court for protection from the government’...
Pope Francis Writes a Book for Children. Press in Chicago will release the book.-25-Jan-2016
While answering letters from children around the world, Pope Francis finally decided to write to all children in the world irrespective of caste, creed, race religion or ethnicity. Words from little minds were thought provoking and inspiring to him. In the midst of his busy schedule, as the head of 1.2 billion Catholics, and age-related health issues, he found time to answer to as many letters as possible. “Dear Pope Francis,” 10-year-old Mohammed begins, “Will the world be again as it was in the past?” The Pope’s response to Mohammed spoke in part of suffering and the people who inflict it: “There are those who manufacture weapons so that people fight each other and wage war. There are people who have hate in their hearts. There are people who are interested only in money and would sell everything for it. They would even sell other people,” he wrote. More to Mohammed’s point, Francis answered: “No, when the time comes, the world will not be as it was. It will be far better than it was in the past.” Signed “Respectfully yours,” Mohammed wrote from a Jesuit-run school for refugee children in Syria and was treated to a long and personal answer from the pope himself. So were 29 other children who posed questions to Francis in letters from around the globe for a new book poignantly illustrated with their own artwork. The book titled “Dear Pope Francis,” will be out on M...
Homeless Woman Gives Birth Outside St.Peters Square in Vatican-21-Jan-2016
A homeless woman gave birth on a cardboard box just outside St. Peter’s Square early on Wednesday (January 20) in near-freezing temperatures and later received an offer of one year’s hospitality in a Vatican institution. Police said the 35-year-old Romanian woman had gone into labor at about 2.30 am in an Italian square just meters (yards) away from the Vatican. An Italian policewoman, Maria Capone, helped deliver the baby, a girl, and her colleagues covered both with their jackets until an ambulance arrived. “I think it was close to zero,” Capone told Italian television. “The baby regained color on her face after we covered her,” another policeman said. The head of Pope’s Francis’ charity office, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, later visited the woman and baby in a hospital a few blocks away and offered her one-year’s free accommodation in a Church-owned apartment, the Vatican spokesman said. He said Krajewski knew the woman and her partner, also a Romanian, because they use showers and food services the Vatican has started to help the growing number of homeless in the area. ...
Pope Makes Surprise Visit to Main Jewish Synagogue in Rome Under Tight Security-17-Jan-2016
Pope Francis today (Sunday January 17, 2016) made his first visit to a synagogue as pontiff, citing an "unbreakable" bond between Jews and Christians as hundreds of armed security personnel were deployed for the Rome visit. Pope Francis is the third pope to visit the Great Synagogue in Italy's capital after John-Paul II in 1986 and Benedict XVI in 2010. Located just across the River Tiber from the Vatican, it stands in an area still known as the Ghetto where under the orders of some of Pope Francis's predecessors, Jews were confined for more than three centuries until their emancipation at the end of the 19th Century. Evoking "the unbreakable bond between Jews and Christians", the pope delivered a message of peace. "Violence against men is in contradiction with any religion worthy of the name, and in particular the big monotheist religions," he said, in his first visit to a synagogue since being elected pope in 2013. He urged rejection of "all forms of anti-Semitism", saying: "we must condemn any abuse, any discrimination and persecution stemming from it." The pope was greeted with applause as he arrived and was met on the synagogue steps by Rome's chief rabbi Riccardo Di Segni. Pope Francis in turn greeted some 1,500 invited guests who filled the religious site to witness the pontiff's visit. After the deadly attacks in Paris in November, claimed by the Islamic State group, security for the visit was p...
Hillary Clinton Promises Unlimited Free Abortions. Says We Should Do Everything We Can To Promote Free Abortion:-13-Jan-2016
Pro-abortion presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is continuing her campaign to push free abortions paid for at taxpayer expense. She got her first endorsement in presidential campaign from the Planned Parenthood Abortion business. Clinton is on a campaign to overturn the Hyde Amendment, which has protected American taxpayers from funding abortions since the late 1970s and which has been upheld by the Supreme Court as constitutional. If the federal amendment is reversed, taxpayers will be on the hook for paying for abortions for poor women, who would become eligible for free abortions for any reason. “It is just hard to justify, because if we have a right — and I think people have a right to health. We’re working on trying to make that real in people’s lives. But certainly, the full range of reproductive health rights that people should have includes access to safe and legal abortion,” Clinton said during a forum at Drake University in Iowa. “But if state governments, if politicians use their power to try to restrict that right, well-off people area still going to have that. We know that. But a lot of poorer women, rural women — isolated, far from a place where they can get services, are going to be denied … So, yeah, I think we should do everything we can to repeal the Hyde Amendment. I think it’s been a blockade,” Clinton continued. During the Planned Parenthood rally where Clinton accepted the abort...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO PEOPLE's POPE-17-Dec-2015
'Bleeding' Holy Communion Bread in Catholic Church. Devotees pouring into St. Francis Xavier Church, Utah.-28-Nov-2015
Catholic Church in Utah, recently became the site of a miracle after a communion wafer placed in water appeared to bleed. Meant to symbolize the flesh of Christ, the wafer--also called Holy Host--was placed in a glass of water near the altar at St. Francis Xavier Church in Kearns after a young parishioner returned it to the priest during communion. The priest reportedly then placed the wafer into the water, expecting it to dissolve in just a few minutes. But it didn’t dissolve. Instead, the wafer remained intact for several days. What's more, it turned a deep blood red. News of the apparent miracle sent shockwaves through the church community and devotees began to pack into St. Francis Xavier's to see the host on display. Salt Lake City Diocese appointed a five-person committee to investigate the potential miracle. Monsignor Rev.Fr. M. Francis Mannion issued the following statement: "Recently, reports of a bleeding host at St. Francis Xavier Church in Kearns have been circulating within the diocese. Monsignor Colin F. Bircumshaw, Diocesan Administrator, has appointed an ad hoc committee of individuals with various backgrounds to investigate the matter. The work of the committee is now underway. The results will be made public. The host is now in the custody of the Diocesan Administrator. Contrary to rumor, there are NO current plans for public exposition or adoration. However, the results of the investigation will be made public when it is complete.&rd...
Baby's tumor shrinks after Pope's kiss.-27-Nov-2015
A Philadelphia baby with rare brain tumor, kissed by Pope Francis during his parade, is showing remarkable improvement. After 8 surgeries and 5 chemotherapies octors had declared in August that baby would live only for a few months since the tumor was not responding to treatment. The recent scan shows that the tumor is shrunken and barely seen. Baby Gianna Masciantonio developed a rare brain tumor just weeks after her birth last year when her red blood cells attacked her brain stem. After multiple chemotherapy treatments, an August brain scan revealed that the tumor was still there, and parents Joey and Kristen Masciantonio decided to do one more round of chemo before withdrawing treatment and enjoying their final days together. Then, in September, they got a call from an FBI friend who'd secured them passes to see the pope during his visit to Philadelphia. The parents who are Catholics got permission from baby’s doctors to brave the throngs and bring baby Gianna to the crowded streets. In what some call the Miracle on Market Street, a security guard brought the baby forward and the pope kissed Gianna's head, and now, two months later, scans reveal her tumor is smaller and doctors have changed the originally grim prognosis. "It was the luck of the draw," her father said. But while he believes in "divine intervention," he's also careful not to dismiss the role of the doctors treating his daughter. "The kiss was God's work, that's for s...
Pope shaken by Paris attack. Safety of millions of Christian pilgrims to Vatican a concern.-14-Nov-2015
Pope Francis said today that he was "shaken" by what he described as the "inhuman" attacks on a string of Paris venues which left at least 129 people dead and over 350 people wounded. "I am shaken, I don't understand these things, done by human beings... There cannot be justification, religious or human. It's inhuman," an emotional pontiff said during a telephone interview with TG2000 television. Grappling to find the right words, the Pope added: "I am with all those with suffer, and with France, which I love so much. " Earlier, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi addressed concerns about safety for pilgrims heading to Rome for the "Holy Year of Mercy," designated by the Pope, which already started on November 8. Millions of Christians are expected to travel to the Holy See. "These murderers, possessed by a crazed hatred, are justly called terrorists because they want to spread terror," Lombardi said. "If we let ourselves be scared, they will have attained their main objective," he said, calling on followers to show "courage and resist the temptation of fear." Source: Vatican AP...
California Passes Assisted Suicide. Signed by the Governor who is a former Catholic Seminarian.-05-Oct-2015
California Governor Jerry Brown (Democrat) signed Assisted Suicide Bill today to make the state the 5th to legalize physician-assisted suicide, following Oregon, Washington , Vermont and Montana. "I don't know what I would do if I were in prolonged and excruciating pain." Brown , a former Catholic Seminarian, wrote in his signing message. " I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded in this bill. And I wouldn't deny that right to others". The California law is modeled like the controversial legislation in Oregon that permits a physician to prescribe a lethal drug to a terminally ill patient----defined as somone with less than 6 months to live----who requests its. However, certain prerequisites must be met, such as counselling on palliative and hospice care, and a determination that the patient is competent and making an independent decision. Medical science (Modern Medicine) traditionally has opposed physician-assisted suicide, calling it a violation of the profession's imperative to "do no harm". All physicians in the world take the oath of "do no harm" while graduating from medical colleges. That used to be the stance of the California Medical Association (CMA) as well, but in June, the CMA announced it was taking a neutral position on the physician-assisted suicide bill that state lawmakers eventually passed. Survey shows that 54% of physicians in America supports assisted s...
Pope met Kim Davis and Husband. Gave them Rosaries. Thanked Kim for her courage.-30-Sep-2015
This meeting was first reported by the ‘Inside the Vatican’ journalist Robert Moynihan. Vatican confirmed it only this afternoon (Wednesday, September 30, 2015) since Vatican officials didn’t want to politicize the issue. On Thursday, September 24th afternoon, after his historic address to the Congress, just a few minutes before flying to New York City, Pope Francis received, spoke with, and embraced Kim Davis — the Kentucky County Clerk who was jailed, for 5 days in early September, for refusing to sign the marriage licenses of homosexual couples who wished to have their civil marriages certified by the state of Kentucky. Kim and her husband had come to Washington for another purpose — Kim was to receive a “Cost of Discipleship” award on Friday, September 25, from The Family Research Council at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. They met privately with Pope Francis at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, D.C., for less than 15 minutes, according to her lawyer, Mat Staver. There is no recording of this conversation, or photographs, as far as I know. Kim Davis gave an account of the meeting to Robert Moynihan, shortly after it took place. She told Moynihan that the Pope spoke in English and there was no interpreter. Pope told her in reply, “thank you for your courage”. Kim then said, “Thank you, Holy Father”. She said she had asked a monsignor earlier what was the proper way to greet t...
Pope’s Visit to East Harlem School. Students still in excitement, and for some, still unbelievable!-26-Sep-2015
When Pope Francis arrived outside of Our Lady Queen of Angels School in East Harlem, the students were so excited that many started crying out. They were holding up rosaries and flags and cell phones so they could snap selfies with the beaming Pope Francis. Pope is also famously known for his selfies and the Oxford dictionary added ‘selfie’ as a new word when Pope’s selfie picture went viral through social media. As Pope Francis entered a classroom, a group of children gathered from four different local Catholic schools greeted him in song. They sang the lyrics of "Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace," known as the Prayer of St. Francis. Pope encouraged them to sing louder. "Keep dreaming about living with joy," the pope told a group of students and faculty gathered to hear him speak. "...you have the right to dream and I am really happy that you...you can find the discipline to do it." Our Lady Queen of Angels School, serves an economically struggling and mostly immigrant community of Latinos and African Americans. The Catholic Church in East Harlem was shut down in 2007 during the national trend of parish closures in the United States, caused by low attendance, a shortage of priests and financial troubles. Local people now hope that with the visit of Pope Francis, the New York Archdiocese will help to reopen the closed church. ...
Pope stumbles on SHEPHERD ONE enroute to Philadelphia. Suffers from Sciatica and Bad Knee.-26-Sep-2015
Pope Francis left New York City to visit Philadelphia this morning (Saturday, Sept. 26) as hundreds of people waved him goodbye at John F. Kennedy Airport. He reached JFK airport by AIRFORCE ONE Helicopter that carried him from Wall Street Heliport in Manhattan. The American Airlines flight arranged for Pope Francis is named SHEPHERD ONE. Pope, who suffers from sciatica and a bad knee, stumbled slightly as he walked up the stairs into the waiting American Airlines flight around 9 a.m. He recovered himself quickly, with his routine-brief case in one hand. On reaching entry door of the flight, he turned back and waved to the crowd with his usual smiling face, but he was seen limping and suppressing his pain. Before climbing the steps of SHEPERD ONE, Pope Francis met with nuns and Catholic leaders on the tarmac, where he was presented with white flowers to "represent the prayers of the people" and "the Blessed Mother". The nuns also gave him homemade Argentinian cookies called alfajores and told him, "this is to make you feel at home," to which he just smiled. The US President flies on AIRFORCE ONE. The Pope flies on SHEPHERD ONE. “Shepherd One” is the Federal Aviation-approved call sign for the Boeing 777 in which Pope is traveling around the United States. The papal seal is affixed to the side of the aircraft, the only major modification that's done. However, the flight number will always be bloc...