Category: Rome

Group of teenagers get opportunity to confess sins to Pope Francis

1461480443025VATICAN CITY –  Sixteen teenagers have gotten an unexpected opportunity to confess sins to Pope Francis.

The pontiff made a surprise appearance late Saturday morning in St. Peter’s Square, where thousands of Catholics faithful, ranging in age from 13 to 16, were participating in a special Holy Year youth day, including confession near the famed Colonnade of Bernini.

Francis and each of the 16 teenagers sat face-to-face in simple chairs set up in pairs for him and many others hearing confessions in the square. The teenagers seemed at ease, with Francis shaking hands warmly with the youths. In all, the pope spent more than an hour in the square.

He has dedicated the Holy Year to two central themes of his papacy: mercy and reconciliation. Source

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Evangelicals lose water supply as officials punish them for refusing to pay amount to fund Catholic fiesta in Mexico

evangelicals-in-mexicoAn evangelical community in Mexico is now suffering from lack of potable water after local authorities cut off their supply for refusing to pay their contribution for the holding of a Roman Catholic fiesta in honour of a Catholic saint.

The family of Maranatha Church’s pastor Octavio Gomez and four other evangelical families in San Jose village in the city of Teopisca in Chiapas state, Mexico refused to pay when the authorities, together with the fiesta organisers, came to visit them early this month demanding a fixed contribution of 200 pesos, equivalent to about $12, the Evangelical Focus reports.

The authorities threatened to cut off their water supply if they persisted in not paying the amount. Moreover, the authorities warned that they would have to pay a fine of 4,000 pesos ($229) to have the water line reconnected once it’s been cut.  Source

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‘Shameful’: Catholic Spanish teacher admits molesting 9 kids, but gets no jail term

5718c72fc461887a658b4599A Catholic Spanish schoolteacher has admitted in court that he abused nine children, all seven years old, but won’t be spending any time behind bars because of a legal loophole.

Roberto P.S. admitted he had molested eight girls and one boy, a spokeswoman for the court said, as cited by The Local.

The teacher got individual sentences of one year per child, totaling nine years in jail, prosecution and defense have agreed, Cadena Ser TV reported.

However, here’s when the tricky law comes to the molester’s rescue: due to the fact that the teacher received individual sentences of one year, and not an entire nine-year sentence, he qualifies for a suspended sentence, according to a reform to the country’s criminal code. Source

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Pope hailed as savior for opening Vatican to refugees

web-pope-mytilene-getPope Francis, during a trip to the Greek island of Lesbos, chose 12 Syrian refugees to come live at the Vatican – all clean-cut, two-parent families with children, one of which is headed by a microbiologist and another, by a tailor and teacher.

NBC News reported one of the families, Hasan and Nour Essa, are simply like any other in the world, hoping to find a decent preschool for their son, 2, Riyad, and are thankful for the pope’s intervention.

“What’s happening with us, it’s like a dream,” said Nour Essa, who’s a microbiologist, to NBC News. “It’s like a beautiful dream.” She later called Francis a “real human being” who’s “more important than any Muslim religious mans,” the news outlet reported.

The pope, in what he described as a “last minute decision,” let the Essas and two other Syrian families join him on his flight back to Rome over the weekend. Vatican officials say the three families were chosen simply because their papers were in order.  Source

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How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11

crash_trade_centerIn its report on the still-censored “28 pages” implicating the Saudi government in 9/11, “60 Minutes” last weekend said the Saudi role in the attacks has been “soft-pedaled” to protect America’s delicate alliance with the oil-rich kingdom.

That’s quite an understatement.

Actually, the kingdom’s involvement was deliberately covered up at the highest levels of our government. And the coverup goes beyond locking up 28 pages of the Saudi report in a vault in the US Capitol basement. Investigations were throttled. Co-conspirators were let off the hook.

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Catholic fans chant ‘You killed Jesus’ during basketball game

church-sign-saying-jews-killed-jesus-2873765_289753_ver1-0_640_480Catholic high school students chanted, “You killed Jesus” at a basketball game against a predominantly Jewish high school in a Boston suburb on Friday night.

During the playoff contest between Catholic Memorial School and the public Newton North High School, fans of the latter began shouting, “Sausage fest!” at the opposing team, an off-color reference to the fact that CMS is an all-boys institution.

In response, the Catholic fans repeated, “You killed Jesus, you killed Jesus,” spectators at the event said.

The Catholic fans’ cheer was a reference to Jewish deicide, the charge that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. Source

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Joe Biden will visit the Vatican to discuss his fight to cure cancer

PANAMA-US-MARTINELLI-BIDENVice President Joe Biden, who has traveled to some America’s leading medical centers in recent weeks as part of what he has called his moonshot to cure cancer, will soon take his quest to the Vatican.

Biden will address a major conference on the progress of regenerative medicine in Vatican City on April 29, the vice president’s office said Wednesday.

The gathering, hosted by the Stem for Life Foundation and the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture, will also draw leading physicians, ethicists and philanthropists to discuss the potential of emerging research to treat cancer and other diseases. The initiative has been championed by Pope Francis, who worked as a chemist before he entered the priesthood and has written in support of scientific progress.

Biden, the nation’s first Catholic vice president, attended Francis’ papal inauguration in 2013 and attended multiple events during the Catholic leader’s visit to the U.S. last fall, including his address to Congress and departure from Philadelphia after the World Meeting of Families there. Source

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Protestant South Becoming a New Catholic Stronghold (2013)

st-_dominics_monastery_courtyardDixie Catholics credit the strong Southern sense of community, and dialogue with faithful Protestants, with helping to power the Church’s growth there.

LINDEN, Va. — In the waves of turbulence that rippled throughout the Catholic Church in the 1970s, the nuns of St. Dominic’s Monastery found themselves forced to leave their longtime home in Wisconsin in search of a new one.

The nuns moved to a temporary residence in Washington, D.C., while looking for a permanent setting conducive to the cloistered, contemplative life they sought to lead. It would be more than two decades before they found one. When they did, it was in what may seem a most unlikely place: the rural northeast of Virginia, considered one of the Protestant Bible Belt states of the South.

The story of St. Dominic’s Monastery’s southern move may be the story of U.S. Catholicism. New data shows that some of the fastest-growing dioceses in the country are deep in the U.S. South.

The third-fastest-developing diocese is Atlanta, which saw the number of registered parishioners explode from nearly 322,000 in 2002 to 1 million in 2012 — an increase of more than twofold, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. Atlanta also has the largest Eucharistic Congress in the country, with an annual attendance of about 30,000, according to an archdiocesan official. Source

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Pope Francis At White House: “Koran And Holy Bible Are The Same”

1-156On Wednesday the Bishop Of Rome addressed 11,000 ticketed guests on the South Lawn of the White House, during which he pontificated on the dire importance of exhibiting religious tolerance. During his hour-long speech, a smiling Pope Francis was quoted telling the White House guests that the Koran, and the spiritual teachings contained therein, are just as valid as the Holy Bible, and should therefore be respected as such.

“Jesus Christ, Jehovah, Allah. These are all names employed to describe an entity that is distinctly the same across the world. For centuries, blood has been needlessly shed because of the desire to segregate our faiths. This, however, should be the very concept which unites us as people, as nations, and as a world bound by faith. Together, we can bring about an unprecedented age of peace, all we need to achieve such a state is respect each others beliefs, for we are all children of God regardless of the name we choose to address him by. We can accomplish miraculous things in the world by merging our faiths, and the time for such a movement is now. No longer shall we slaughter our neighbors over differences in reference to their God.” Source

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