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VATICAN CITY - Tackling the problem of climate change is a serious ethical and moral responsibility, Pope Francis told negotiators from around the world meeting for a climate summit in Lima, Peru. "The time to find global solutions is running out. We can find adequate solutions only if we act together and unanimously," he said in a written message to Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru's minister of the environment and host president of the 20th UN Climate Change Conference. Thousands of negotiators from 195 countries gathered for the meeting in Lima Dec. 1-12 to hammer out details of a new international agreement...

In his weekly address at the Vatican late last month, Pope Francis issued a remarkable statement that’s sure to come as welcome news to anyone who’s ever lost a beloved pet. According to Francis, the promise of an afterlife applies not only to believers, but to all animals as well."The Holy Scriptures teach us that the realization of this wonderful plan covers all that is around us, and that came out of the thought and the heart of God," Pope Francis said, as quoted by Italian news site Resapubblica. The Pope then went on to say that “heaven is open to all...

Among other things, the questionnaire asked how the church can care for families with gay children and discern "positive and negative elements" in heterosexual civil unions. It also asked how the church can better provide sacraments for Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the church. Church teaching holds that without an annulment, or a church decree that the first marriage was null, such Catholics are living in sin and are thus ineligible to receive communion. Francis has sought to end what he calls "de facto excommunication" for these Catholics, and the issue was a source of heated debate during the...

The Catholic Church must help parents stand by their gay children, Pope Francis said in a new interview about his papal ministry. The pontiff’s comments come a day after Francis urged top church officials to pay attention to the “signs of the times” and listen to ordinary Catholics, according to The Independent. “We come across this reality all the time in the confessional: a father and a mother whose son or daughter is in that situation. This happened to me several times in Buenos Aires.... We have to find a way to help that father or that mother to stand...

"God is good to me, he's bestowed on me a healthy dose of unawareness." Pope Francis, see here. “From the start I said to myself: ‘Jorge, don't change, just keep on being yourself, because to change at your age would be to make a fool of yourself.’” (From the same article). Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand reminds us that, "The capacity to grasp values, to affirm them, and to respond to them, is the foundation for realizing the moral values of man. Now these marks can be found only in the man who possesses reverence. Reverence is the attitude which can...

Not just fleeing the Middle East: It’s not just the Mideast from which Christians are being driven. “Christians are being driven from the Middle East in suffering,” Pope Francis said in a video message yesterday as French Cardinal Phillipe Barbarin visited the Iraqi city of Irbil, where thousands of Christians have taken refuge. “And from America; and from the military, who need God’s protection, as we do in the USA,” adds Fred Abel of jfredabel@gmail.com. Abel is spot on. The main difference between Christians being driven out of the Middle East and those being driven out of America is that...

Pope says equating Islam with violence is wrong By Julio Severo According to Reuters, Pope Francis said on Sunday that equating Islam with violence is wrong. Pope and Turkish mufti Francis, the leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, told reporters aboard his plane returning from a visit to Turkey that it was wrong for anyone to react to terrorism by being enraged against Islam. Francis’ predecessor, Benedict XVI, caused, according to Reuters, storms of protest throughout the Islamic world in 2006, when he made a speech that suggested Islam espouses violence. Benedict said he had been misunderstood and apologized....

ROME – On his flight back to Rome after visiting Turkey, the Roman Catholic Pontiff known as Pope Francis told reporters that Islam should not be equated with terrorism and violence–a statement that some may disagree with considering the teachings of the religion. “On Islamophobia, it is true that when one sees these terrorist acts, not only in this region, but also in Africa, there is this reaction [of], ‘If this is Islam, I am going to get angry,'” he said. “And so many Islamic people are offended.” “Many, many [Muslims] say, ‘No, we are not this. The Koran is...

Pope Francis equated Christianity with Islam while leaving Turkey. “We have our share of fundamentalists” too. The pope also said fighting poverty and hunger were key to defeating Islamist killers. Ugh. The Jerusalem Post reported: Pope Francis said 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...

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...