The Philippines president-elect accused the Catholic church on Sunday of hypocrisy, saying the bishops who had condemned him during his campaign had been asking favours from the government.
Rodrigo “the punisher” Duterte, who won the 9 May presidential elections by a landslide, caused outrage in the church hierarchy in December after making a rambling and obscenity-filled speech cursing the pope. About 80% of Filipinos belong to the Catholic church. Continue reading…
A step that could lead to an eventual embrace of the presumptive Republican nominee
Pope Francis says that London’s election of the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital is an example of how migrants can be integrated in Europe.
Voters in the English capital elected Sadiq Khan, the son of a Pakistani bus driver, on May 6 after a campaign in which the Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith, was criticized for focusing on Labour candidate Khan’s religion.
In an interview with French Catholic newspaper La Croix published on Tuesday, the leader of the Catholic Church said that Khan’s election provided an encouraging sign as other parts of Europe put up borders to migrants coming from the Middle East and Africa. Francis, 79, cited the orchestrators of the Brussels attacks—in which suicide bombings at an airport and metro station killed 36 people in March—as an example of the consequences of not integrating migrants. Many of the perpetrators of both the Brussels attacks and Paris attacks that killed 130 people in November 2015 grew up in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital, seen as a haven for extremists. Continue reading…
As they had when Pope Francis addressed Congress last fall, Vice President Joe Biden and former House Speaker John Boehner stood together again on May 15, this time at Notre Dame’s Commencement to receive the Laetare Medal, the university’s highest honor.
The decision to honor the two political leaders had drawn criticism, especially because of the Vice President’s support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage, but the citation read before they received the honor noted they were being recognized for their public service and work for the common good. Source
Attending a rally for Bernie Sanders usually involves long lines and security screenings, but that wasn’t the case at an intimate, informal event Friday evening supporting the Vermont senator’s presidential campaign in a park here.
Instead of metal detectors, entrance required burning ceremonial sweetgrass.
Participants were “smudged,” meaning the smoke from the sweetgrass was wafted over them before they could enter the sacred circle and begin a Wiccan ritual to support Sanders ahead of Oregon’s primary on Tuesday. Source
WHILE some of them had earlier questioned the fitness of Rodrigo Duterte to be President, Catholic bishops were now offering his incoming administration “vigilant collaboration.”
“The greatest promise the Church can offer any government is vigilant collaboration, and that offer we make now,” Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said in a statement…
He said several critical, even spiteful, voices had asked the prelates to desist from “interfering” in politics.
“We cannot,” he said, explaining that “it would be a denial of Christ’s universal Lordship were we to desist from reminding his disciples of what fidelity to him—in all things, including political life—demands.” Source
The frontrunner in the Philippines election, Rodrigo Duterte, is known for saying things that many would consider unsayable.
But his outspoken style – and his record as mayor of the country’s third biggest city – have made him popular with voters. A vow to kill 100,000 criminals… Source