Free Republic

ROME — Pope Francis will visit Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, in September, the Vatican has announced. According to Indonesia’s Religious Affairs Minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, the Vatican sent a letter to the Indonesian government confirming that Pope Francis will be present in Indonesia on Sept. 3, 2024. On Wednesday, Indonesian Secretary of State Pratikno said that the Foreign Ministry is working out details for a bilateral meeting between President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Pope Francis to be held when the 87-year-old pontiff visits the country in September.

Corporate media outlets are running salacious headlines that Pope Francis is now allowing “priests to bless same-sex relationships.” The implication from the media is that the Catholic Church has made a “radical” reversal on its stance that marriage is between one man and one woman. This is factually untrue. On Monday, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released a “Declaration ‘Fiducia Supplicans’ On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings.” In the declaration, the Vatican first reaffirms that marriage is the “exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children.”...

ROME — Pope Francis has signed an interfaith statement asserting that humanity faces a “global climate crisis” that demands phasing out fossil fuels. The Abu Dhabi Interfaith Statement for COP28 manifests the signers’ “shared concern for the escalating climate impacts that imperil our cherished planet, as well as our common commitment to jointly address this global crisis.”

Welcoming thousands of children to the Vatican on Monday, Pope Francis fielded selected questions and heavily focused on imparting his support for “climate change” talking points to them. In a meeting organized by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, Pope Francis hosted around 7,000 children in the Paul VI Audience Hall for an encounter on the theme “Let’s Learn from Boys and Girls.” The pinnacle of the event was Francis’ presence in the Audience Hall with the children, where he fielded a series of pre-approved questions, and read back his answers. Yet while the event was themed “Let’s Learn...

The Holy Father emphasized that the Catechism teaches that people with same-sex attraction should not be marginalized.On his return flight from South Sudan on Sunday, Pope Francis said that God loves and accompanies people with same-sex attraction. When asked by a journalist what the Pope would say to families in Congo and South Sudan who reject their children because they are homosexual, Pope Francis responded that the Catechism teaches that people with same-sex attraction should not be marginalized. “People with homosexual tendencies are children of God. God loves them. God accompanies them,” the Pope said during an in-flight press conference...

[Catholic Caucus] Francis Contradicts John Paul IIFrancis rambled in his interview with AmericaMagazine.com that an unborn child is a living "human being," however, “I do not say 'a person,' because this is debated, but a living human being.”Shaun Kenney, vice president for American Life League countered on CatholicWorldReport.com (December 5) that Francis' distinction makes no sense because personhood is essentially defined by two qualities: existence and a rational soul.John Paul II writes in Evangelium Vitae (EV) that the terms "human being" and "human person" are synonymous, and that modern genetic science offers clear confirmation for this. From the first instant...

Pope tells theologians to consult ‘non-Catholics,’ avoid ‘going backward’ in TraditionThe Pontiff once again criticized Catholics attached to the traditional form of the Church's life.VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has warned an influential, Vatican-based theological commission against “going backward” in “Tradition,” instead urging them to promote the Gospel by consulting non-Catholic “experts.”The 85-year-old Pontiff made the comments Thursday to the International Theological Commission, a body of theologians set up by Pope Paul VI in 1969 to advise the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).Francis first highlighted how the Commission was to fulfil its task “in...

'In order to understand we have chosen the path of dialogue,' said Pope Francis when asked about China.(LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis has described Communist China as “not undemocratic” and refused to support Hong Kong’s Cardinal Joseph Zen as he prepares to go on trial in the country on September 19. Speaking to reporters on board the papal plane from Kazakhstan to come on Thursday, Pope Francis fielded questions about China and the Vatican’s relation with the Communist state. “To understand China takes a century, and we do not live for a century,” he said vaguely. He described the Chinese mentality...

Pope Francis has demoted the leader of the conservative Opus Dei group from bishop to priest, revoking the structure ordained by Saint John Paul II. In an apostolic letter ironically titled “Ad Charisma Tuendum” (In defense of the charism), Pope Francis reversed measures enacted by Saint John Paul II in 1982 that ensured that the Opus Dei personal prelature would always be governed by a bishop, thus guaranteeing a certain degree of independence and flexibility. Francis has transferred the oversight of Opus Dei from the Congregation of Bishops to the Dicastery for the Clergy in a move widely interpreted as...

‘Let him talk to his pastor about this incoherence,’ said the Pontiff.VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has noted the “incoherence” of President Joe Biden’s support for abortion as a Catholic, but said that he “leaves it” to Biden’s “conscience” whether to receive Holy Communion or not. Speaking to the Spanish TV network Univision in an interview segment released July 12, the 85-year-old pope condemned abortion, saying that “scientific data” show that “a month after conception, the DNA of the fetus is already present and the organs are already aligned.” “Is it fair to eliminate a human life?,” he asked....

VIGANÒ’S DECLARATION regarding the apostolic letter “Desiderio Desideravi”In an editorial titled “Cancel Culture: The Eternal Gnostic Dream of Starting Over from Zero,” that appeared on June 30, 2022, in the Bulletin of Social Doctrine of the Church of the Cardinal Van Thuân International Observatory (here), Archbishop Giampaolo Crepaldi stigmatized, with great clarity of analysis, the “attitude that favors the new over the old, which makes virtue coincide with adhesion to historical novelties and sin coincide with the preservation of the past,” and which consists in a systematic and ruthless damnatio memoriae of all that is opposed to modernity. The Archbishop...

Megyn Kelly gives a 30 sec video report on her cell phone from Vatican City ..vehicle on vacation.

“You are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance.”

Pope Francis Writes to New Ways Ministry: “Thank You for Your Neighborly Work”"News broke yesterday that Pope Francis has been in correspondence with New Ways Ministry this past year, thanking the group for its work and affirming its co-founder.According to the National Catholic Reporter:“In two letters to New Ways Ministry this year, Pope Francis commended the organization for its outreach to the LGBTQ community and referred to one of its co-founders, Loretto Sr. Jeannine Gramick, as ‘a valiant woman’ who had suffered much for her ministry.“Written in Spanish on official Vatican stationary, Francis’ letters mention that the pope is aware...

Pope Francis released a video message advocating more left-wing politics on Saturday, in the latest attempt by the Vatican to reassure the world that Catholicism is on the side of social justice. The pope praised deceased felon George Floyd as a “Good Samaritan,” and provided a moral endorsement of violent BLM rioters. “Do you know what comes to mind now when, together with popular movements, I think of the Good Samaritan?” the Pope declared. “Do you know what comes to mind? The protests over the death of George Floyd. It is clear that this type of reaction against social, racial...

Pope Francis: All Religious Traditions Must Resist ‘Temptation to Fundamentalism’Speaking on a stage together with Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu representatives, Pope Francis appealed for peace amid the world’s current conflicts.VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis asked leaders of world religions to resist “the temptation to fundamentalism” for the sake of peace at an interreligious gathering Thursday in front of the Colosseum.Peace “summons us to serve the truth and declare what is evil when it is evil, without fear or pretense, even and especially when it is committed by those who profess to follow the same creed as us,” the...

UNMERCIFUL GLOBALIST: Francis Declares War On His Own ChurchHere comes Covid again and, along with it, here comes Health Passports. Are you ready for the next lockdown?Plus, civil war in the Catholic Church. In this episode of The Editor’s Desk, Michael J. Matt discusses how faithful Catholics all across the spectrum are either perplexed or downright outraged by the attempted suppression of the Catholic Mass on the part of Pope Francis.The questions are:Why is Francis alienating his own Church?Why is Francis eliminating Pope Benedict’s ‘hermeneutic of continuity’?Why is Francis confirming that traditionalists were right all along?The answer to all these...

Clueless: Francis Lacks Elementary Catechism KnowledgeIn his Sunday after Corpus Christi homily, Francis moralised that “we cannot break bread on Sunday if our hearts are closed to our brothers and sisters. We cannot partake of that Bread if we do not give bread to the hungry. We cannot share that Bread unless we share the sufferings of our brothers and sisters in need.”This reminded of his embarrassing June 2019 Corpus Christi homily in which he claimed that the Eucharist is “Jesus who becomes bread.”In the Catholic Faith which was transmitted by the apostles, it's the other way round: bread becomes...

A report by the Vatican's own newspaper reveals Pope Francis recently hung an image behind his desk depicting a naked Jesus Christ caressing his dead apostle Judas Iscariot. In an article titled "Judas and the Scandal of Mercy," L'Osservatore Romano dedicated the first three pages of its edition the day before Good Friday to a makeover of the disciple who betrayed the Son of God at the Passover. The author of the lead editorial, Andrea Monda, said the paper chose this year to honor the "most tragic and unsettling" figure of the Gospel.

Pope Francis on Sunday argued that having received mercy, Jesus’ apostles became merciful themselves, sharing ownership over everything, calling such an arrangement “not communism, but pure Christianity.” “The Acts of the Apostles relate that ‘no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.’ This is not communism, but pure Christianity,” he said. The pope’s words came as he marked Divine Mercy Sunday in a Roman church dedicated to the devotion. Given COVID-19 restrictions, the Church of Santo Spirito was half empty, yet filled with a group of male and female prisoners from three...