Free Republic

LONDON (Reuters) - Sadiq Khan of opposition Labour Party is the strong favourite to win London's mayoral election on Thursday after a contest marked by religious tensions and accusations of racism. Polls show Khan, the son of a bus driver, is as much as 20 percentage points ahead of rival Conservative Zac Goldsmith in the race to run one of the world's top financial centres. If he wins, he will succeed current Conservative mayor Boris Johnson to become the first Muslim to head a major Western capital. London's population of 8.6 million is among the most diverse in the world...

Denver, Colo., Apr 29, 2016 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The lawyers of the bakery owner who made headlines for declining to make a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding is “evaluating all legal options” to preserve the man’s First Amendment rights after the state’s highest court declined to take the case. “We asked the Colorado Supreme Court to take this case to ensure that government understands that its duty is to protect the people’s freedom to follow their beliefs personally and professionally, not force them to violate those beliefs as the price of earning a living,” Alliance Defending Freedom...

Wed Apr 27, 2016 - 6:43 pm EST At Easter services, Russian Orthodox Church aims to collect 1 million names backing abortion ban MOSCOW, April 27, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) -- To celebrate the holiest holiday of the year this Sunday, the Russian Orthodox Church plans to circulate a petition calling for a ban on abortions in the nation. The pro-life Easter petition drive is expected to garner more than one million signatures in Russia. With Orthodox Easter, also known as Pascha, approaching, millions of believers -- many for the only time this year -- will be packing Russia's churches, celebrating the...

My dear friend's, once America's restraint is totally and fully removed from this present evil world, what is to stop the global lawless march to doomsday and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse's ride (2 Thess. 2:2-8, Rev. 6-19)! My friends, a very sobering NOTHING! That is right, NOTHING! We are at the bottom of the super accelerating vortex in world's history, where there is no more time, room and remedies to fix our nation and world's horrific EXPONENTIAL ills. We are at the bottom of the super accelerating vortex in world's history, where there is no more time, room...

When it comes to religious liberty debates, big businesses don’t want the people to decide. Or at least they don’t want the people of Missouri to decide. While the more explosive battles in Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina about bills regarding religious liberty and LGBT accommodations have gained national attention, Missouri has flown mostly under the radar.

Vice President Joe Biden arrives in Rome on Thursday to attend a conference on breakthroughs in regenerative medicine, part-hosted by the Pontifical Council for Culture. Biden will deliver a talk the following day about the Obama administration's "Moonshot" initiative which aims to make therapies available to more patients and accelerate cancer research by improving cancer prevention and detecting it at an early stage. The Vice President, whose son Beau died of brain cancer last year, is aiming to double the rate of progress toward a cancer cure, for which the Obama administration has asked Congress for $1 billion. The April...

April 27, 2016, Wednesday -- The Next Synod: The Return of "The Peace of God"? "The Pope would like to dedicate the next Synod of Bishops to the theme of peace." —The Italian news agency ANSA, in a short news article released this morning in Italy. The question of what topic the next Bishops' Synod would focus on was discussed in a meeting of the Synod's leadership in Rome on April 18 and 19; this is the first story that claims to give reliable information about what the topic will be    "Other proposals of the participants were the themes...

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - Palm Sunday, celebrated the day before yesterday by the Churches that follow the Julian calendar, saw an exponential increase of Egyptian Coptic pilgrims who have come to celebrate the rites of Holy Week in Jerusalem. According to the Egyptian media, in the current year already at least 5,700 Coptic Orthodox Christians have reached the Holy City, an increase of more than a thousand units compared to the Coptic pilgrims who had carried out a pilgrimage to the Holy Places of Jerusalem in 2015. The growing presence of the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox in the Holy City marks...

Rick Wiles interviews retired firefighter Mark Taylor who was given this prophetic revelation in 2011. The Lord has chosen Mr. Trump to bring America back from the brink of destruction. Mr. Taylor wrote this amazing prophecy in 2011 giving us a glimpse of what's to come and why all who attack Mr. Trump will fall by the wayside. What's amazing is that this revelation has gone forth to thousands. The wrath of God has come not for the people of America but for the leaders of the establishment. The hour of judgment is upon them. The light has begun to...

The liberal media are so in love with Pope Francis that they can't report the hard truth about his blatant interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and what it represents. Not only was socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) invited to a conference of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PASS) on Catholic social teaching and the world situation, he also met personally with Pope Francis. A secular Jewish atheist, Sanders is not even a member of the Catholic Church. "I am not actively involved with organized religion," Sanders has said. His brother Larry says, "He is quite substantially not religious."...

Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Rhode Island has a message for Catholic voters: never ever vote for any candidate who supports abortion. With Hillary Clinton as the likely presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, Bishop Tobin’s words make it clear that Catholic voters can’t vote for her for president. Bishop Tobin made the remarks in an April 21 post on Facebook: Catholics: Vote Pro-Life As the primary election draws near in Rhode Island, I encourage faithful Catholics to vote pro-life – and never to vote for any candidate, of any party, who supports abortion. And don’t be fooled by those...

Psalm 3:4,5 I Cried Out to the Lord, and He Heard me from His Temple in Jerusalem. Then I Lay Down and Slept in Peace and Woke Up Safely, For the Lord was Watching Over me.

A recent New York Times article revealed that 90 percent of teens in the predominantly Muslim districts of Molenbeek and Schaerbeek think of the Brussels terrorists as heroes. The main thing to notice here is not that these youth have warped values (which they do), but that their heroes are people who are willing to die for what they believe. Which means that some of these young people are likely willing to die for the same beliefs. Meanwhile, a test given to thirteen-year-olds in an Italian middle school revealed that 90 percent of them would convert to Islam if...

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has made a surprise visit to one of Rome's main parks to participate in an Earth Day event. Francis, who wrote an encyclical decrying the exploitation of the Earth's environment and resources often at the expense of the poor, went to Villa Borghese, a park filled with Sunday strollers.

Moscow, April 25, Interfax - Signatures for the legal protection of life from the moment of conception and for banning abortions to be held on April 30, on the Easter eve, in churches of Russia. "Signatures will be collected with the blessing of the spiritual guide of His Holiness the patriarch elder Eli (Nozdrin)," press service of the For Life Movement told Interfax-Religion. Organizers expect to collect several thousand signatures at each parish: on the Easter eve churches will be full of believers who come to bless Easter cakes and eggs. "By now, we have collected 200,000 signatures, our objective...

See the world through the eyes of the Creator, Pope Francis said at the end of his general audience in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday, marking Earth Day. “I exhort everyone to see the world through the eyes of God the Creator: the earth is an environment to be safeguarded, a garden to be cultivated,” he said. “The relationship of mankind with nature must not be conducted with greed, manipulation and exploitation, but it must conserve the divine harmony that exists between creatures and Creation within the logic of respect and care, so it can be put to the service...

A federal government agency has blasted “recent state laws passed, and proposals being considered, under the guise of so-called ‘religious liberty’ which target members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (‘LGBT’) community for discrimination.” “Religious freedom is an important foundation of our nation,” said Martin Castro, chairman of the US Commission on Civil Rights. “However, in the past, ‘religious liberty’ has been used to block racial integration and anti-discrimination laws.” Castro added: The North Carolina and Mississippi laws, and similar legislation proposed in other states, perverts the meaning of religious liberty and perpetuates homophobia, transphobia, marginalizes the transgender and...

Bishop says politicians 'may get aggressive' over resistance to same-sex marriageA Norwegian bishop has said the country’s clergy will no longer officiate at civil weddings, after the predominant Lutheran Church’s governing synod voted to conduct gay marriages in Norway. Bishop Bernt Eidsvig of Oslo told Catholic News Service that he would have to seek permission from the Vatican, saying: “It’s clear we must distinguish our own Church marriages from others. “This is a matter of liturgy, so it doesn’t necessarily reflect broader change in our society’s moral values. But politicians may now get aggressive toward churches who resist these weddings,...

A Christian brother and sister from Syria felt blessed to have been among the dozen refugees selected to start a new life in Italy — but now say their savior, Pope Francis, abandoned them on a Greek island, according to a report.

Much of ancient Israel’s plight, well documented throughout the Old Testament, was its insatiable thirst for pagan nature worship. This of course was in direct violation of the first two commandments of the Mosaic Law which commanded Israel not to worship any other false god or idol (Exodus 20:3-4). The reason why Israel was forbidden to worship other gods, the natural created order, and idols, was given in Genesis. Genesis 1 presents to the reader an ultimate Creator who made the universe out of nothing through His omnipotent spoken word, and then climaxed the creation process with the making of...