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The commander of the Swiss Guard at the Vatican has been removed from his post, The surprise news that Daniel Anrig, who had a reputation for being rigid and “teutonic The 42-year-old father of four was appointed by Pope Benedict in 2008 and his five-year contract had been extended indefinitely. Italian press reports said the pontiff wanted to see a less rigid military corp and one that was less obsessed by rules. The pope recently told his security personnel in a special service in their honour that the biggest threat facing the Vatican was not from a bomb or a...

Pope Francis traveled on his first trip to Turkey over the weekend attempting to reach out to the Muslim community, warning that the Islamic State is a major threat to Christians in the Middle East and calling on moderate Muslims to join in constructive dialogue and solidarity with the rest of the world. Instead, Turkish President Recept Tayyp Erdogan, who had a message of his own for the Pope, greeted him at his $600 million palace and blamed the rise of ISIS and the recent violence in Syria and Iraq, including beheadings, enslavements, and the wholesale ethnic cleansing of the...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Ankara and Istanbul were gray and cold, at least compared to Rome, during Pope Francis' Nov. 28-30 visit to Turkey. And the general reception, outside of the pope's official meetings, was hardly warmer. There were none of the enthusiastic crowds that usually greet him on his trips, no masses waving signs of welcome along his motorcade route or behind police barriers at the stops. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople kisses Pope Francis as they embrace during an ecumenical prayer service in the patriarchal Church of St. George in Istanbul Nov. 29. (CNS/Paul Haring) Pope Francis, who...

Note: before some "apologists of the untenable" claim this must be a translation error, it is not, as you will see - we carefully checked it and retranslated it word by word from the Italian. What does it mean? We will not venture to say. We report it, for the record, you decide: The Conciliar Constitution Gaudium et Spes, faced with these questions that forever resonate in the hearts of men and women, states: “We do not know the time for the consummation of the earth and of humanity, nor do we know how all things will be transformed. As...

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) - Pope Francis said on Sunday that equating Islam with violence was wrong and called on Muslim leaders to issue a global condemnation of terrorism to help dispel the stereotype. Francis, the leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, told reporters aboard his plane returning from a visit to Turkey that he understood why Muslims were offended by many in the West who automatically equated their religion with terrorism. Francis' predecessor, Benedict XVI, caused storms of protest throughout the Islamic world in 2006, when he made a speech that suggested to many Muslims that he believed...

ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT FROM ISTANBUL (CNS) -- Pope Francis called on political and religious leaders across the Muslim world to condemn violence done in the name of Islam. The pope said he told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Nov. 28 that "it would be beautiful if all Islamic leaders -- whether they be political leaders, religious leaders, academic leaders -- would say clearly that they condemn (terrorism), because that will help the majority of Islamic people to say, 'that's true,'" and show non-Muslims that Islam is a religion of peace. Pope Francis answers questions from journalists on his flight...

Pope Francis exits Istanbul's Holy Spirit Cathedral Nov 29. Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA. Istanbul, Turkey, Nov 30, 2014 / 01:47 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis’ visit to Turkey may change the traction Christians have in a country that is almost entirely Muslim, said two Turkish young women who had the occasion to greet the Pope on his recent trip. Baram, a nearly 30-year-old woman with a degree in French Literature, told CNA that “there is a group of people here in Turkey that does not understand Christianity, or simply they are not interested in Christianity.” However, she said, “the fact that...

Our guest writer Cassandra has written another article for this blog. ~~~~~~~~ The BBC reported that the Pope visited the Blue Mosque in Istanbul as part of a three-day visit to Turkey. According to the BBC reporter, the Pope offered a moment of “silent prayer...next to the Grand Mufti.” The BBC man said that it was, “a moment of rich symbolism in terms of the inter-faith dialogue” that the Pope is trying to promote. And it certainly was! For some reason the BBC didn't see fit to report on the Pope's visit to the Orthodox Christian basilica of Hagia...

Never before seen - Francis bows his head and asks Separated Patriarch: "Bless me and the Church of Rome" Istanbul, November 29, 2014. ... Filled of "gratitude and eagerly waiting", [the Pope] concludes [his address] by wishing Bartholomew and the Church of Constantinople the "fraternal" wishes for the feast of the patron saint to be celebrated tomorrow. In return he asked - unexpectedly - for a favor: "Bless me and the Catholic Church", bowing his head, waiting for the 'brother' to lay hands on him. And Bartholomew, without hesitation, gives him a kiss on the head affectionately. [Italian] Listening to...

Alleviating hunger and poverty won’t end jihad terrorism. The Pope here is repeating the oft-refuted notion that poverty causes terrorism. CNS News noted in September 2013 that “according to a Rand Corporation report on counterterrorism, prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2009, ‘Terrorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated, or afflicted by mental disease. Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds.’ One of the authors of the RAND report, Darcy Noricks, also found that according to a number of academic studies, ‘Terrorists turn out...

In the face of the offensive of radical Islam, Francis’s idea is that “we must soothe the conflict.” And forget Regensburg. With serious harm also to the reformist currents of Islam... It is impossible not to see in this the features of a “war of Islam” pushed to the extreme, fought in the name of Allah. It is illusory to deny the Islamic origin of this unbridled theological violence. This has been published even by the officially supervised “La Civiltà Cattolica,” only to be contradicted afterward by its fearsome director, Antonio Spadaro, the Jesuit who plays the role of Francis's...

It’s no secret that liberals adore Pope Francis. The more secular the “progressive,” the greater the reverence for the new man in the Vatican. Liberals—which includes liberal Catholics and Protestants as well as secularists—see the pontiff as the long-awaited liberator of the reactionary Roman Catholic Church.And yet, if you think about it, there aren’t many things they actually want from Francis. What kind of wish-list do they have in mind as they celebrate his arrival? Francis is not calling for women priests, for abortion-on-demand, or for clowns dancing at the altar during consecration of the Eucharist. Sure, they relish his...

Pope Francis warned Thursday that planet earth would not forgive the abuse of its resources for profit, urging the world's leaders to rein in their greed and help the hungry -- or risk a doomsday scenario in which nature would exact revenge. "God always forgives, but the earth does not," the Argentine pope told the Second International Conference on Nutrition (CIN2) in Rome, a three-day meeting aimed at tackling malnutrition, a global scourge which afflicts poor and rich alike. "Take care of the earth so it does not respond with destruction," he warned representatives from 190 countries gathered for...

In Latin America, they're pulling millions of faithful away from the Catholic Church. But the pope has only words of friendship for them. This is his way of doing ecumenism, unveiled here in two of his video messages by Sandro Magister ROME, November 19, 2014 - With the mastery for which it is known all over the world, the Washington-based Pew Research Center has conducted a survey on a massive scale that gives substance to a fact that was already known in general terms, the startling decline of Catholic membership in the Latin American subcontinent:> Religion in Latin America. Widespread...

ROME – Pope Francis is coming to the United States.

Femen, the women's rights group known for topless protests, took their act to a new level of provocation on Friday with an explicitly sexually suggestive demonstration in front of the Vatican. In what they described as a protest over Pope Francis's upcoming visit to the European Parliament, three members of the group appeared on St Peter's square wearing only leather mini-skirts and flower garlands in their hair. Two of them had "Keep it Inside" written on their backs - a slogan apparently related to what followed. After bending forward, the women dropped down on to all fours, all the time...

In his latest bid to ease the suffering of the poor — and upend the expectations of the papacy — Pope Francis plans to build showers for the homeless under the sweeping white colonnade of St. Peter’s Square. A homeless man sits close to where the showers are going to be built in St. Peter’s square. Photo via Josephine McKenna/RNS Related Reading VIDEO: Our Neighbors in the Pews by The Editors Left Behind by John A. Zukowski Compassion in the Stacks by Brittany Shoot Forty Shades of Green by Sean McDonagh The Rich Get Richer by Julie Polter Three showers...

Using science is wise - blindly patronizing science is presumption and idolatry - Anon. In a blazing headline One News Now published an article entitled "Pope backs evolution, Vatican calls creation 'blasphemous,'" in it, author Michael F. Haverluck says "In a speech given at a Pontifical Academy of Sciences ceremony unveiling a bust of his predecessor, Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI, Pope Francis declared his full-fledged support of evolution as the scientifically correct explanation of the origin of man - and the universe." Unwilling to go full-fledged "everything from nothing' the Pope has scratched out an explanation from the playbook of 'theistic-evolution'...

America's Catholic bishops came together Monday to project an image of unity, after a Vatican meeting on the family unleashed an uproar over the direction of the church. Last month's gathering in Rome on more compassionately ministering to families featured open debate — alarming many traditional Catholics, who argued it would undermine public understanding of church teaching. Pope Francis encouraged a free exchange of ideas at the assembly, or synod, in contrast to previous years, when such events were tightly scripted. At a meeting Monday in Baltimore, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, signaled there...

VATICAN CITY, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- After speaking out against statements of Pope Francis that appear to be very lenient toward homosexuals in the church, Cardinal Raymond Burke has been removed from his position as leader of the Vatican's highest court. The pope has worked on a draft of the synod of bishops that included welcoming homosexual people into the Catholic church, to some degree. That part did not make it to the final draft, but it did stir things up in the church. Around this time, Cardinal Raymond Burke told Buzzfeed "the pope is not free to change the...