Free Republic

NEW YORK - Pope Francis’s landmark agreement with the Muslim world, signed earlier this year during his visit to Abu Dhabi, was heralded at the annual prayer service on the eve of the United Nations General Assembly as “an antidote to hatred, violence, extremism and blind fanaticism.” “The Declaration is an appeal to all people of goodwill to put aside particular and egotistic interests, be they individual, national or continental, to break down the walls in our minds and to cross the borders in order to promote and build up justice and peace,” said Bishop Paul Hinder, who serves as...

The Prince of Wales is the highest-ranking royal who could have attended the occasion The Prince of Wales will travel to Rome to attend the ceremony where John Henry Newman is to be declared a saint. Clarence House confirmed today that Prince Charles is going to be present in St Peter’s Square on 13 October 2019 when Pope Francis canonises Cardinal Newman, making him the first English non-martyr saint since the reformation. As the Queen no longer travels abroad, the Prince of Wales is the highest-ranking royal who could have attended the occasion. Following the canonisation ceremony, the prince will...

These aren’t the church plants you were thinking of, but students at New York’s Union Theological Seminary held a chapel service on Tuesday during which participants confessed to plants. “Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor,” Union tweeted on its official account. “What do you confess to the plants in your life?” Rather than confess transgressions against an endangered grove or old growth forest, the student-led September 17 service featured...

Observant Presbyterians are always part of gatherings at Rutgers Presbyterian Church. But much of the time, so are Roman Catholics and Jews, as well as a smattering of people who consider themselves vaguely spiritual. Valerie Oltarsh-McCarthy, who sat among the congregation listening to a Sunday sermon on the perils of genetically modified vegetables, is, in fact, an atheist. “It’s something I never thought would happen,” she said of the bond she has forged with the church’s community, if not the tenets of its faith. She was drawn to the church, she said, by “something in the spirit of Rutgers...

Attendance at Episcopal churches continues its downward spiral.At the height of its popularity in the United States, the Episcopal Church had more than 3.5 million members. By 2010, that number dropped to less than 2 million, and the decline is still underway, according to numbers from the denomination's Office of the General Convention.Institute of Religion and Democracy Communications Manager and Anglican Program Director Jeff Walton says the decline actually started in the back in the 1960s, but picked up steam again in the 80s and 90s with the writings of Episcopal theologian John Shelby Spong.“He said in order for Christianity...

Russian Orthodox priests have tackled the issues of drunkenness and casual sex in the city of Tver by pouring holy water over its residents from an aircraft. Father Alexander Goryachev, along with local bishop Metropolitan Savva, marked the annual All-Russian Sobriety Day on September 11 by dousing the city with more than 18 gallons of holy water in order to "protect the city afflictions befalling it, from all accidents and social adversity", Savva told Tver News (via the BBC). Since 2006, Goryachev has been marking the sobriety day celebrating the beheading of John the Baptist by flying over Tver along...

Beijing is implementing total control over the Church and religious communities. For some Chinese priests there is a re-edition of the Cultural Revolution. But in reality China is implementing a project that dates back to the 1980s: the Chinese Church is a national church that belongs only to the state.Siegburg (AsiaNews) - From August 10 to September 1, the 10th European Catholic China Colloquium ECCC “Laudato Si’ and Technoscience – Implications with Focus on the Church in China” was held in Siegburg, near Cologne (Germany). Organized by the China Zentrum of St Augustin, the meeting saw the presence of international...

Climate change may well be a problem, but the chief of the United Nations’ agency on climate says it won’t destroy the world – and shouldn’t stop young people from having children. Alarmist rhetoric from “doomsters and extremists” that babies will destroy the planet “resembles religious extremism” and “will only add to [young women’s] burden” by “provoking anxiety,” he said. Petteri Taalas is no “climate-change denier.” He is secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the UN’s special agency on weather and climate with 193 member states and territories. The WMO’s most recent global climate report states that “evidence exists...

ROME - The Synod of Bishops for the Amazon will help the Catholic Church make its presence felt and voice heard in a region that is dangerously approaching “a point of no return,” said the special secretaries of the synod. “It is a great and continuing challenge for the Catholic Church to make the original Amazonian peoples feel part of it and contribute to it with the light of Christ and the spiritual richness that shines in their cultures,” Cardinal-designate Michael Czerny and Bishop David Martinez De Aguirre Guinea wrote in an article published Sept. 12 in La Civilta Cattolica,...

A Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation in New York made news this week after it featured the sculpture of a pagan deity in its chancel. The United Presbyterian Church of Binghamton hosted “the Sviatovid idol” which depicts a ninth-century Slavic deity, as part of a September 6-7 festival of lights. Sviatovid (alternately known as Svetovid, Svantovit, Sventovit, or Svantevit) was a local Slavic god of war, fertility, and abundance in the Baltic region. In the early twentieth century, an idol was discovered near the Zbruch River in Western Ukraine (accessible with free JSTOR account). This idol pictured was originally thought to...

September 13, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — There has been a campaign to “infiltrate” the Church “that goes back centuries,” Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò said in a new interview with Dr. Robert Moynihan of Inside the Vatican. This campaign can be traced “in particular, to the creation in the middle of the 1700s of freemasonry,” said Viganò. “But of course this project was very deceptive, and oriented, or even included in some way, the forces of some members of the Church.” “This is described in the book Infiltration by Dr. Taylor Marshall, so you may find some indication of this process there,”...

ROME — Pope Francis has banned plastic in Vatican City State to stand in solidarity with environmentalists. He made the announcement from aboard the papal plane during a long-haul flight back from his recent trip to Africa. The pope said he had been disturbed by a conversation a couple months ago with sea chaplains and fishermen who recounted how they had gathered six tons of plastic from the ocean over the course of a few months. “In the Vatican we have banned plastic,” Francis told journalists. “We are working on that.” The pope went on to explain that his prayer...

My latest at PJ Media: Eighteen years after the September 11 jihad attacks that murdered nearly three thousand people, this is where we are: the Bloomfield Hills Baptist Church in Michigan has canceled an event called “9/11 forgotten? Is Michigan surrendering to Islam” under pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. And so the answers are clear: yes, 9/11 has been forgotten, and Michigan is indeed surrendering to Islam. The event was to feature an ex-Muslim, Shahram Hadian, speaking on “How the Interfaith Movement is Sabotaging America and the...

In the northern Russian capital of St. Petersburg, two cross processions took place yesterday to commemorate the transfer of the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky, with over 150,000 people participating. His Eminence Metropolitan Barsanuphius of St. Petersburg and Ladoga served the Divine Liturgy in Kazan Cathedral together with several other hierarchs, including His Eminence Bishop Siluan, the rector of St. Petersburg Theological Academy. High ranking members of the Russian government, as well as foreign dignitaries, and the rector of Saint Petersburg State University attended the Liturgy. After another Liturgy in the Holy Trinity Cathedral of the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra,...

Archbishop Porteous said that priests cannot violate the seal of confession under any circumstances The leader of Tasmania’s Catholic Church said priests in his archdiocese will not comply with a law that would require them to break the seal of confession to report suspected child abuse. The law, passed earlier this week, makes religious ministers mandatory reporters of child sexual abuse, and requires Tasmanians with knowledge of abuse to report the crime to police, or face prison time. Porteous said that priests are “unable” to violate the seal of confession under any circumstances, according to Australia’s ABC News. “I believe...

ROME, September 13, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — In a renewed and enthusiastic endorsement of globalism, Pope Francis has announced he is hosting an initiative for a “Global Pact” to create a “new humanism.” The global event, set to take place at the Vatican on May 14, 2020, is themed Reinventing the Global Educational Alliance. According to a Vatican statement issued on Thursday, Sept. 12, the Pope is inviting representatives of the main religions, international organizations and various humanitarian institutions, as well as key figures from the world of politics, economics and academia, and prominent athletes, scientists and sociologists to sign a...

Eger, Hungary also famous for fending off Muslim invasionEGER, Hungary (ChurchMilitant.com) - A new church named after Pope St. John Paul II has been built on the site of a former Communist estate in the history-laden city of Eger in northeastern Hungary. Hungarian State Secretary Miklós Soltész said it is significant that the new church is built in a Communist-era housing estate designed to form the letters CCCP (Russian abbreviation for USSR) when viewed from the air. "It was a major effort by the Soviet Union and communism to completely eradicate faith, religion and Christianity, and wherever new housing estates...

Watch Amir's video get interrupted and cause him to have to do part 2 separately! Amir tells of the recent strikes in Iraq by Israel, the Iranian deception of carpet and fruit facilities, Iran's continuing quest for a land "bridge" to the Mediterranean, and of course a summing-up of the election coming up in just a few days in Israel, in which Netanyahu must get his 61 seats. The recent annexation of land may help to gain votes in the crucial election. The so-called Deal of the Century will be revealed shortly after the election.

Pope Francis has accused Britain of placing greed over humanity by refusing to hand over a disputed island archipelago in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. In an unusually muscular foreign policy intervention, the pope suggested that Britain’s failure to heed a United Nations vote calling on it relinquish sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory was uncivilised. “Not all things that are right for humanity are right for our pocket, but international institutions must be obeyed,” the pope told journalists as he left Mauritius at the end of a three-nation tour of Africa. “If there is an internal dispute or...

The residents of Qaraqosh, Iraq, can borrow books again from the reopened Christian library which was burnt and partially destroyed during the occupation of the town by Islamic State/Daesh. Islamic State's invasion of the region forcefully displaced tens of thousands of Christian families. IS militants intentionally destroyed the villages and homes of thousands of Christians, as well as burning their churches and libraries. When people returned to their hometown after its liberation, they found most of the library books burnt or stolen. First, with the help of church youth volunteers, dust and ashes were cleaned off the surviving books. People...