Category: Rome

FRESNO Weeping Virgin Mary statue is being called a miracle

weepmaryVIDEO:  FRESNO, Calif. —

A statue of the Virgin Mary in Fresno, California appears to be weeping. The family who owns the statue calls it a miracle and said it’s been happening for a while.

To the faithful, Maria Cardenas said the statue of the Virgin Mary is a blessing. Tears seem to well up in her right eye and stream down her face to her chin.

Cardenas said it’s beautiful the way she looks right now. Every tear, she said, is nothing short of a miracle. So she collects them in a glass and shares them with those who find their way to this home.

A lot of people come and they can’t believe it, she said, but they come with faith.  Source

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Italy approves civil unions for homosexuals

gay-pride-flag“Gay” activists won a huge concession in Italy as parliamentary leaders, following a fiercely contested legislative fight that lasted years, gave their thumbs-up to a measure allowing civil unions for homosexuals.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called a conference to press the final bill into law, bringing an end to Italy’s status as the last major country in the West to refuse to legally recognize “gay” unions, Reuters reported.  Source

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Philippines bishops: Catholic Church will not stop ‘interfering’ in politics

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Bishops offer olive branch to Duterte

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

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Pope Dropped Christian Refugees, Takes in ONLY MUSLIMS

isis-pope2Christians are being annihilated — wiped from the face of the earth in Syria. Christians are becoming extinct everywhere in the Middle East except Israel. The Pope has abandoned his people.

The Pope imports the oppressors not the victims – his own people.

“Pope Francis Abandons Christian Syrian Refugees, Takes Only Muslims To Vatican Instead,  Source

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Pope Francis tells Europe, ‘I Have a Dream’

7ccfb754fe4e440cb9bbb0fdd6a2b3fdROME—On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech that became a defining moment in the American Civil Rights movement, laying out his dream for a racially reconciled nation.

On Friday, Pope Francis delivered his own “I have a dream” address, in this case dedicated to Europe, calling the continent to undergo a “memory transfusion” to avoid the mistakes of the past and to pursue a future based on economic justice, openness to newcomers, respect for life in all its stages, and dialogue with everyone.

“I dream of a Europe that is young, still capable of being a mother: a mother who has life because she respects life and offers hope for life,” Francis said on Friday, as he was accepting the prestigious Charlemagne Prize, given yearly to personalities or institutions for their efforts towards European unity.  Source

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A pope who shuns awards set for a big one on Friday

a0ccb9afe79cc48b853c8a0fda7e4be8-717x450ROME — Not that Pope Francis probably needs additional accolades, but on Friday he’s set to receive a big one anyway: The prestigious Charlemagne Prize, awarded each year to individuals or institutions for their service to European unification.

Technically, he’ll become the first pontiff to receive the award since it was created in 1950. In 2004 Pope John Paul II received an “extraordinary” edition of the prize, the only one given so far, but the actual award that year went to Irish politician Patrick Cox.

St. John Paul, and now Francis, are the only religious leaders to have received the recognition, even though its origins include a Christian element.  Source

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Religious order covered up for paedophile priest who abused up to 100 children

page18_courtA priest who abused up to 100 children was allowed to act “with impunity” and without any restrictions on his access to children by his religious order, which concealed his behaviour from the Archbishop of Dublin and the State authorities.

Salvatorian priest Fr Patrick McDonagh was convicted in 2007 by the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on eight counts of sexual and indecent assault on four girls in Dublin, Limerick and Roscommon between 1965 and 1990, and was sentenced to four years in jail. He died in 2009.

The serious mismanagement and concealment of his crimes by his order was one of the findings published by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCCI), the Church’s own safeguarding watchdog.

The audit of 30 religious orders revealed that the Salvatorians failed to monitor Fr A, as Fr Patrick McDonagh is referred to, from 2002 – when one of his own relatives accused him of having abused her as a child – to 2004, when he underwent treatment for his behaviour and admitted the extent of his abuse.  Source

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Calling on a greater power! EU bosses hope for Pope Francis blessing for ‘common Europe’

pope-francis-667419The bloc’s chief bureaucrats – European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council president Donald Tusk and European Parliament president Martin Schulz – will tomorrow visit the Vatican City.

Pope Francis will be bestowed with the Charlemagne Prize by the trio, which is handed out each year for efforts towards European unity.

This is despite Pope Francis having previously hit out at the “aloof” and “bureaucratic” EU.

He also recently rebuked Brussels for its handling of Europe’s migrant crisis.  Source

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Food Theft in Italy May Not Be a Crime, Court Rules

Canzio, reato immigrazione clandestina inutile,dannosoROME — Stealing food from a supermarket may not be a crime in Italy if you are homeless and hungry, the nation’s highest appeals court has ruled.

In a case that has drawn comparisons to“Les Misérables,” the Supreme Court of Cassation threw out the conviction of a homeless man from Ukraine, Roman Ostriakov, who was caught trying to take 4.07 euros — about $4.70 — worth of cheese and sausage from a store in Genoa without paying for it. A trial court sentenced him in February 2015 to six months in jail and a fine of €100.

“The condition of the defendant and the circumstances in which the merchandise theft took place prove that he took possession of that small amount of food in the face of the immediate and essential need for nourishment, acting therefore in a state of need,” and therefore the theft “does not constitute a crime,” the appellate court wrote in its decision, which was reported on Monday by the Italian news agency ANSA.  Source

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Francis rails against child sexual abuse, saying abusers must be ‘severely’ punished

Pope Francis Visits SardiniaPope Francis railed against the sexual abuse of children in a weekly address in St. Peter’s Square Sunday, calling any such abuse a “tragedy” and saying the church cannot tolerate the matter and “must severely punish the abusers.”

Greeting members of an Italian association that has worked to raise awareness against pedophilia and to report sexual abuse crimes, who were present in the Square for the recitation of the Regina Coeli prayer, the pontiff thanked them for their work before departing from his prepared text.

“This is a tragedy,” said Francis off the cuff, his voice raised and his arm extended from the window of the Vatican’s apostolic palace above the Square. “We must not tolerate the abuse of minors. We must defend minors. And we must severely punish the abusers.”

The Catholic church around the world has been embroiled in scandals over its handling of sexually abusive clergy for decades, with survivors, advocates, law enforcement agencies, and some local jurisdictions saying members of the hierarchy covered up crimes in order to protect the institution at the risk of children’s well-being.  Source

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