Free Republic

ROME — As El Salvador prepares to celebrate the beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the criminal gangs that terrorize the country have agreed to a sort of truce: As a gift to the martyr, they’ve promised to suspend killing police and military officers, judges, politicians, and the poor. Romero, who was shot to death while saying Mass in 1980, is considered a national hero in El Salvador for his defense of the poor and of human rights at the outset of a bloody civil war. His May 23 beatification is expected to be one of the largest public events in...

Bobby Jindal is barely breaking 2 percent in Iowa polls — but you’d never know it from the way he wowed the crowd at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition summit on Saturday. The Republican governor from Louisiana is one of nine presidential hopefuls speaking at the Des Moines-area confab, which gathers evangelical Christians together to judge the GOP candidates’ social conservative bona fides. Freshman senators Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, the first candidates to speak, were both well received by the Iowan audience. Former Texas governor Rick Perry was next, though he didn’t exactly capture the same enthusiasm. But...

Rick Santorum was the returning champion at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition forum on Saturday. But inside Waukee, Iowa’s Point of Grace Church, it certainly didn’t feel like it. After his upset victory in the 2012 Iowa caucus – driven largely by the state’s powerful evangelical voting bloc – many expected the former Pennsylvania senator to be welcomed back with open arms. But compared to the other eight Republican candidates present at the Des Moines-area conference, Santorum’s speech fell strangely flat. The audience didn’t clap much, and when they did it was usually polite and perfunctory. Lines that felt...

Crowds hold signs in defense of traditional marriage at the March for Marriage in Washington, D.C. on Saturday. Credit: Adelaide Mena/CNA Washington D.C., Apr 25, 2015 / 02:59 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A diverse crowd of thousands of people from across the U.S. gathered in front of the US Capitol to speak and stand in defense of marriage on Saturday. “We have too long taken for granted the gift of marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky. and President of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops told CNA. The Archbishop cautioned that...

Another day to go and hear from Dad ...

Michigan Republican Tim Walberg was a Christian minister before winning election to Congress in 2010 — and he hasn't entirely changed jobs. In a rare Tuesday night committee meeting at which House Republicans advanced a bill curtailing reproductive rights, Walberg took the even rarer step of lecturing his colleagues on Scripture. "It is clearly taught by Jesus the Christ himself," Walberg preached to members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, "for those of us who believe in him — and I understand and I accept the fact that there are those who don't — but he said render...

One week after exposing Ireland resident Mary McGovern-Carberry as the ‘secret’ Catholic visionary “Maria Divine Mercy,” the Irish Mail on Sunday featured her again…gathering up all available copies of the 1 February 2015 publication near her Malahide home. The former owner of McGovern PR should have known better. The public relations consultant, who fell on hard financial times in recent years, transformed herself into an all-internet, all-secret ‘visionary’ in 2011 gathering millions of Irish-Mail-Inside-2-Feb-8-1followers who purchased her books and medals. Store security cameras caught Carberry – who, as Maria Divine Mercy, called herself the last prophet, angel and victim soul...

Archbishop Blase Cupich allows non-Catholic Governor to receive Holy CommunionCHICAGO, April 24, 2015 (ChurchMilitant.com)—Eyewitness reports as well as television footage clearly prove that Illinois governor Bruce Rauner received Holy Communion at Cardinal George's funeral Mass at Holy Name Cathedral on Thursday, April 23. Governor Rauner is not Catholic. Therefore, what appears to be a grave violation of Canon 844 has been committed. Present at the Mass was Chicago's new archbishop Blase Cupich. In addition to the violation of canon law, the question is being asked: Was a sacrilege committed on the new archbishop's watch? According to canon law, since the...

ICXC NIKA

St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA. Vatican City, Apr 24, 2015 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis met April 17 with Laurent Stefanini, the openly gay foreign service officer named by France to be ambassador to the Vatican. News of the private audience, which was kept strictly confidential, was reported April 22 by the French magazine Le Canard Enchainé, although the magazine said that the meeting took place April 18. A source from the Vatican Secretariat of State told CNA that the meeting actually took place in the late evening of April 17, and confirmed that it...

A Nashville swingers club has undergone a conversion — it says it's now a church — in order to win city approval so it can open next to a Christian school. The story began last fall, when a fixture in downtown Nashville called The Social Club sold its building and purchased a new one in a run-down office park several miles to the east. The new building is geographically isolated at the end of a dead-end street, but it is near the back of Goodpasture Christian School, a large private school serving pre-school through high school children. It might have...

Pope Francis made history when he said, of being gay: “Who am I to judge?” Now close Vatican-watchers say the pope is in a complex diplomatic spot in the case of a gay man France has nominated to be ambassador to the Holy See. France nominated Laurent Stefanini in January, but so far the Vatican hasn’t accepted the appointment. European media has speculated that this is because Stefanini, a Catholic who worked for years in the French Embassy at the Vatican, is gay, though the French government officially is denying any problems. This week a French government spokesperson confirmed that...

Report says during ‘discreet’ 15-minute meeting with Laurent Stéfanini, pontiff told him Vatican could not accept his appointmentPope Francis met France’s nominated ambassador to the Holy See, who is gay, and told him that the Vatican would not accept his appointment, a French newspaper has claimed. In a meeting over the weekend, the pontiff allegedly cited his displeasure with a controversial 2013 gay marriage law in France as part of his reason for the decision, according to the report in satirical title Le Canard Enchâiné. Pope Francis also allegedly said he did not appreciate the manner in which France had...

The UN needs this message.

Moscow, April 22, Interfax - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he sees the Islamic State terror group (ISIS) as the main enemy of Russia now. "I believe that ISIS is our main enemy now," he said in an interview with three radio stations on Wednesday, commenting on the fact that "hundreds of Russian citizens, hundreds of Europeans and hundreds of Americans are fighting on the side of the ISIS."

A Nigerian bishop says that he has seen Christ in a vision and now knows that the Rosary is the key to ridding the country of the Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram. Bishop Oliver Dashe Doeme says he is being driven by a God-given mandate to lead others in praying the Rosary until the extremist group disappears. “Towards the end of last year, I was in my chapel before the Blessed Sacrament … praying the Rosary, and then, suddenly, the Lord appeared,” Bishop Dashe told CNA April 18. In the vision, the prelate said, Jesus didn’t say anything at first,...

The opening prayer in the Alabama Senate today included a reference to the same-sex marriage controversy swirling in Alabama. Pastor David Gonnella of the Magnolia Springs Baptist Church in Theodore asked God to "Forgive us for allowing sexual perversions to be considered as normal." Asked if he was referring to same-sex marriage, Gonnella said he was referring to any law that would treat as normal something that God considers an abomination. Gonnella said he disagreed with a federal district judge's ruling earlier this year to overturn Alabama's ban on same-sex marriage. Some probate judges issued licenses to same-sex couples for...

As the U.S. Supreme Court readies to hear arguments in favor of same-sex marriage on Tuesday, April 28, Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, urged pastors across America to preach and pray against it because "marriage was God's idea, and He will preserve it, with or without us." "We know that marriage is intended to be sacred, beautiful, and nourishing. If you do not influence your congregation's understanding of marriage, who will fill the void? Hollywood? Divorce courts?" asked Cruz in a letter sent to tens of thousands of pastors highlighted by CBN News. "Prayer moves our God to...

Bishop Oliver Dashe Doeme, head of the Diocese of Maiduguri in Nigeria's Borno State, was in a chapel praying before the Blessed Sacrament last December when, he says, something extraordinary happened: Jesus Christ appeared holding a sword, which He offered to the prelate. According to Bishop Dashe, the moment he took the sword from Jesus' hands, it transformed into Rosary beads. He then heard Christ repeat three times, "Boko Haram is gone." The bishop recalls, "I didn't need any prophet to give me the explanation. It was clear that with the Rosary we would be able to expel Boko Haram."...

Perhaps you will find no issue reflecting a greater divide among Utahns that whether LDS Church leaders have too much influence in the Utah Legislature. A new UtahPolicy poll by Dan Jones & Associates finds that three-fourths of the faithful members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say their church has “about the right amount of influence” on state lawmakers’ political decisions. But when you ask the same influence question of non-Mormons, you find super-majorities – 79 percent of Catholics, 84 percent of Protestants – say the Mormon Church has too much influence on Capitol Hill. Now,...