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On the evening of Sept. 12, 2006, my wife and I were dining in Cracow with Polish friends when an agitated Italian Vaticanista (pardon the redundancy in adjectives) called, demanding to know what I thought of “Zees crazee speech of zee pope about zee Muslims.” That was my first hint that the herd of independent minds in the world press was about to go ballistic on the subject of Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture: a “gaffe”-bone on which the media continued to gnaw until the end of Benedict’s pontificate. Eight years later, the Regensburg Lecture looks a lot different. Indeed, those...

Today, our beloved Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI celebrates his 86th birthday! Please join us in offering up prayers for him, his health and his intentions. In order to honor his birthday, we thought it would be helpful for you to get to know him a bit better. Joseph Ratzinger was born on April 16, 1927, Holy Saturday. Baptized the same day, he grew up feeling close to the Church in many ways. His years growing up in Germany were not always easy. He watched the brutalities of the Nazi regime, especially towards to Catholic Church. On more than one occasion,...

In order for such evil to be concealed and tolerated, it is necessary that the right people hold key positions, and that not only a homolobby, but a homoclique or a homomafia is created. –Fr Dariusz, from his report "With the Pope against Homoheresy" It can hardly be denied now...in light of this [report] that one of the big struggles the pope has had to deal with has been the issue of disobedient and uncooperative bishops and even cardinals who are either homosexual themselves or involved in a cover-up of the homosexual network or at the bare minimum covering...

Since Pope Benedict’s shock announcement Monday, I have held off commenting. Time was needed to step back and consider just what this astounding action from the world's leading defender of life and family really meant. It was an earthquake announcement that had to have greater significance than the Pope merely being tired and worn out. The two lightening strikes onto the dome of St. Peter’s that evening added an uncanny emphasis that the Pope’s action demanded the world’s attention.

In his most eloquent account of the relationship between faith and reason – the 2006 Regensberg address – Pope Benedict XVI argues that the modern understanding of reason that restricts rationality to the deliverances of the hard sciences is incapable of offering a rational justification of itself, and much of anything else that makes life worth living. “Modern scientific reason,” the Holy Father writes, “quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit [i.e., mind] and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based.”...

He was supposed to be ‘God’s Rottweiler.’In Newsweek, A.N. Wilson looks at the paradox of Benedict XVI. My wife exclaimed, when she heard of the pope’s surprise announcement to retire:“It’s bad enough having one old man thinking he’s infallible—now there’ll be two of them!” Our conversation went on to imagine the election of yet another octogenarian, who might well in turn resign before the demise of Benedict. Pretty soon, the Vatican could fill up with retired infallible old men, most of them Italian,allnodding in front of the daytime television in the geriatric wing, andall—all—infallible.

Vatican City, February 13, 2013 (Zenit.org). | 650 hits Here is a translation of the brief statement by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope's secretary of state and the cardinal camerlengo, at the end of this evening's Ash Wednesday Mass, over which Benedict XVI presided. * * * Most Holy Father,with feelings of great emotion and profound respect, not only the Church, but the whole world, has heard the news of your decision to give up the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, Successor of the Apostle Peter.We would not be honest, Your Holiness, if we said that this evening...

<p>Pope Benedict XVI is to resign from the head of the Catholic Church on February 28, the Vatican confirmed in a statement on Monday, after he said he no longer had the strength to fulfill his duties adequately.</p> <p>A Vatican press conference started at 11.40 a.m. London time. A Vatican spokesman said the decision "took us by surprise".</p>

Although Pope Benedict caught nearly everyone by surprise when he announced his resignation, we can’t say that he didn’t give us fair warning. In an interview in 2010, the Holy Father explained at some length why a Pope should resign when he no longer had the strength to carry out his duties. He even said at the time: “I also notice that my forces are diminishing.”For months now, visitors to the Vatican have reported evidence of the Pope’s physical decline. He not only needs help walking because of aching joints, but also has trouble concentrating through a long work session...

Pope Benedict XVI announced Monday that he would resign Feb. 28 — the first pontiff to do so in nearly 600 years. The decision sets the stage for a conclave to elect a new pope before the end of March.

“I come to you as Bishop of Rome, but also as an old man visiting his peers. It would be superfluous to say that I am well acquainted with the difficulties, problems and limitations of this age and I know that for many these difficulties are more acute due to the economic crisis. At times, at a certain age, one may look back nostalgically at the time of our youth when we were fresh and planning for the future. Thus at times our gaze is veiled by sadness, seeing this phase of life as the time of sunset. This morning,...

On 11 February, the day Pope Benedict announced that he would resign, lightning struck St. Peter’s Basilica.

February 9, 2013. (Romereports.com) Benedict XVI will announce on Monday the date for the canonization of over 800 new saints for the Catholic Church, during a consistory with cardinals. Among the soon to be saints are Mother Laura, the first Colombian saint, and Mother Lupita, the second female Mexican saint.    Mother Lupita co-founded the religious congregation of the Handmaids of Saint Margaret Mary and of the Poor in Jalisco, Mexico. Mother Laura Montoya founded the Missionaries of St. Mary Immaculate and St. Catherine of Siena to help local indigenous people.  The rest of the large group are the 813...

Pope Benedict XVI 'is to resign' Breaking news The Pope is to resign at the end of this month in an entirely unexpected development, reports from the Vatican say.

Fox News Alert, the Pope will be retiring at the end of the month. Vatican Press Office told Fox News

The Holy Father met with Lebanese political and religious leaders in the Baabda Presidential Palace, where he was welcomed by the country’s President Michel Suleiman and his wife The Pope’s second day of his three-day Apostolic Visit to Lebanon is being marked by a series of political and institutional meetings and an encounter with a group of young Middle Eastern people in the afternoon. After lunching with Lebanese patriarchs and bishops in the Armenian Catholic Patriarchate of Cilicia, Benedict XVI will move on to Bkerke, to meet with Lebanese and Middle Eastern young people. Thousands of people waving Lebanese and...

Vatican City, Apr 15, 2012 / 04:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Holy Mass is more than a historical re-enactment, Pope Benedict XVI said on April 15, Divine Mercy Sunday. “Christian worship is not just a commemoration of past events, or even a particular mystical, interior experience, but essentially an encounter with the Risen Lord,” he told pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square prior to the midday recitation of the Regina Coeli prayer. For while Christ now “lives in the dimension of God, beyond space and time” he is still truly present in the midst of his creation as “he speaks to us...

April 5, 2012 Pope Denounces Dissident Priests VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI denounced priests who have questioned church teaching on celibacy and ordaining women, saying Thursday they were disobeying his authority to try to impose their own ideas on the church. Pope Benedict made the rare and explicit criticism from the altar of St. Peter's Basilica in his homily on Holy Thursday, when priests recall the promises they made when ordained. In 2006, a group of Austrian priests launched the Pfarrer Initiative, or pastor initiative, a call to disobedience aimed at abolishing priestly celibacy and opening up the clergy...

The Pope will on Sunday launch a renewed attack on the "moral relativism" that he has blamed for Britain's summer riots.In a message for the 2012 World Peace Day of January 1, Pope Benedict said that neither peace nor justice was obtainable if the objective norms of morality expressed in the Ten Commandments continue to be rejected. His words represent another severe criticism of moral relativism, the humanistic creed that holds there can be no objective standard on which to base morality. They come just months after the Pope told Nigel Baker, Britain's Ambassador to the Holy See, that the...

People who have spent time with him recently say they found him weaker than they'd ever seen him, seemingly too tired to engage with what they were saying. He no longer meets individually with visiting bishops. A few weeks ago he started using a moving platform to spare him the long walk down St. Peter's Basilica.