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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is mocking the brief meeting Bernie Sanders had with Pope Francis Friday, which the GOP front-runner said was a short "five minutes." "You know, he went to see the pope," Trump said of Sanders during a rally in Syracuse, New York Saturday. "Five minutes. Then he came out. He said, 'We talked about the environment, we talked about global warming, we talked about all these different things.'" "And I said, wait a minute, he was only there five minutes," Trump added. "So the pope gave him five minutes. I wonder why the pope gave him...

Pope Francis has taken 12 Syrian migrants back with him to the Vatican after visiting a camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. The three families boarded the papal jet as the pontiff departed following his trip......

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders met with Pope Francis in the Vatican on Saturday, calling the short visit an "honor and a joy." "Today certainly was the highlight of the trip," Sanders told NBC News of his 6 a.m. (midnight ET) meeting with the pontiff outside the papal residence's breakfast room. He called the pope "one of the great leaders in this world." "In terms of economic justice, the need to combat climate change — nobody in the world has been more profound and articulate than the pope, and I'm delighted to go forward with him on those issues," said...

Up late, and watching CNN and the Pope has landed on the Greek island of Lesbos, and the "refugees" have smartphones taking pictures and selfies with the Pope.

Full title - "[Catholic Caucus] World Over - 2016-04-14 – Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation on the Family with Raymond Arroyo" FR GERALD MURRAY and ROBERT ROYAL...the Papal Posse...join us to discuss Pope Francis' recently released Apostolic Exhortation, AMORIS LAETITIA (The Joy of Love). Excerpt - see video of this EWTN program segment at "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Avd7bCiV0".

With the post-synod Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris laetitia, published on April 8th, Pope Francis has officially given his opinion on marital moral issues which have been under discussion for two years now. At the Consistory of 20th and 21st of February 2014, Francis had entrusted the task of introducing the debate on this theme to Cardinal Kasper. Cardinal Kasper’s theses, according to which the Church must change Her matrimonial praxis, formed the leit motiv of the two Synods on the Family in 2014 and 2015 and now forms the basis of Pope Francis’ Exhortation. In the course of these two years,...

It’s a somewhat obscure apocalyptic novel, much overlooked since its publication in 1907, and yet it comes with a recommendation that just about any best-selling author would covet: the spiritual leader of the whole world says it’s a good read. And not just the current pope, the previous one too.Pope Francis raised eyebrows in 2013 and again in 2015 when he recommended Robert Hugh Benson’s Lord of the World to the faithful as a book that depicts a “globalization of hegemonic uniformity.” Similarly, then-Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, referred to the Universalism depicted in Lord of the...

"In Bitter, Bizarre First Post "Love" Homily, Pope Lashes Out at Critics, Calls Judas "This Poor Repentant Man," Blames Jewish Priests for Judas' Death (They Were Bad Confessors and had No Mercy)The Pope appears to be growing increasingly unhinged." Is the aggressive crazy talk a response to perceived opposition or a post Amoris victory lap? Vatican Radio reports on today's homily at Santa Marta. The first part deals not with Judas but with those who clutch to "the letter" of the law. It is impossible to believe that Francis is not referring to opponents of the "pastoral solutions" proposed in...

The long awaited Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetita, is now out. As a lay Traditional Catholic with common sense, I will now lay out the reasons I found the exhortation an epic tragedy. Many of these reasons you will probably never hear from the Neo-Catholic pundits. I will first quote a selected portion of the exhortation in red, and then give my reaction. The number in parentheses is the paragraph in Amoris Laetita where the quote can be found. Predictably, I did not get past the first paragraph without spitting my coffee out. As the Synod Fathers noted, for all...

Mortal sin is replaced with social sin and the door to Communion for the divorced and remarried is opened: the real sin is ignoring the poor Antonio Socci 'Libero' April 9, 2016 Was Cardinal Kasper right when he announced “the great revolution” a month ago? With the Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris laetitia is Bergoglio overturning the Magisterium of the Church, thus putting himself above the words of Christ and God’s commandments? With words he says he is not changing doctrine. But with facts he has today opened up to something that until now has been forbidden by Holy Scripture and the...

Pastoral Discernment and Dead Members “Alive” - Francis' Exhortation mortal_sin_cfn Francis' Apostolic Exhortation: Pastoral Discernment and Dead Members “Alive” “In the case of divorcees who have remarried, we posed the question, what do we do with them? … let us open the doors a bit more... Why can’t they be godfathers and godmothers ? … Things need to change, our standards need to change.” - Pope Francis By John Vennari www.cfnews.org The Vatican has sent a letter to the world’s bishop with instructions on how to prepare the faithful for Francis’ post-Synodal Exhortation. Francis’ document, said to run about 200...

Pope Francis has just published his long-awaited Apostolic Exhortation on the Family, Amoris Laetitia. In it, he repeats many of the problematic and controversial statements of the previous 2014 and 2015 Synods of Bishops on the Family. Among these, one finds the law of gradualism with regard to sinful relationships, the claim that there are “seeds” of goodness in such relationships that are objectively contrary to God’s laws, and a general tone of not speaking of sin at all with regard to those ways of living that put the soul of the persistent sinner gravely at risk of not attaining...

The promulgation of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia by Pope Francis marks the conclusion of a synodal process that has been dominated by attempts to undermine Catholic teaching on matters relating to human life, marriage and the family, on questions including, but not limited to, the indissolubility of marriage, contraception, artificial methods of reproduction, homosexuality, "gender ideology" and the rights of parents and children. These attempts to distort Catholic teaching have weakened the Church's witness to the truths of the natural and supernatural order and have threatened the well-being of the family, especially its weakest and most vulnerable members. The...

Pope Francis put his shoulder to the doors of the Catholic Church and shoved them open a little wider Friday, calling for the church to be more tolerant in practice while not changing any official doctrines. He urged priests around the world to be more accepting of gays and lesbians, divorced Catholics and other people living in what the church considers "irregular" situations. "A pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws ... as if they were stones to throw at people's lives," Francis writes in a sweeping paper outlining his stance on family matters. He...

Twelve Things that Caught My Eye about Pope Francis’s New Document on Love and Marriage and Family By KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ April 8, 2016 For search-engine optimization, I thought about titling this post: “What Pope Francis Has to Say to Kim Kardashian about Her Dad Caitlyn.” I didn’t, but I imagined had Pope Benedict XVI issued the document Pope Francis did on marriage and family and society and accompaniment and reconciliation, the headlines might have read a lot differently, even with the same text. (I also never would use that title because while it might work on Google it’s not...

Pope Francis, who has long revealed his liberal positions through interviews, came out on Friday in an official statement calling on Catholics to be more accepting of homosexuals as well as divorced Catholics. While he didn't change official church doctrines in his paper, which is an "apostolic exhortation" instructing Catholics on how to live, the pope paved the way for a serious shift in the Catholic church away from central tenets of the faith. "A pastor cannot feel that it is enough simply to apply moral laws...as if they were stones to throw at people's lives," he wrote in the...

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says he would "very much like to" meet Pope Francis when he travels to the Vatican next week but he has not received an official invitation from the Catholic leader. It's "not yet clear," Sanders told journalists in New York Friday, saying this pope is someone he has "enormous respect for in terms of the mental consciousness that he's raising." Sanders' campaign released a statement Friday saying that Sanders, who is the first Jewish candidate ever to win a presidential primary, will address a conference next week hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences...

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has accepted an invitation from the Pope to the Vatican. Mr Sanders, who is Jewish, accepted an invitation to Rome for a conference at the end of next week. The Vatican visit is four days before the primary contest in New York, a competitive battle between him and front-runner Hillary Clinton.

He called for divorced and remarried Catholics to participate more fully in church life. But he closed the door on gay marriage. He quotes Jorge Luis Borges and Jesus Christ. There is an entire chapter on love. But more than anything, Pope Francis’s long-awaited document on family life, released Friday by the Vatican, amounts to an exultation of traditional marriage while recognizing that life, in his own words, isn’t always “perfect.” Yet rather than judging, he commanded, the church should be a pillar of support.

During Holy Thursday Mass, Pope Francis washed the feet of migrants, three of whom were Muslims. Most Catholics understood this as a gesture of humility and brotherhood. That is how the Catholic press reported it—and that, undoubtedly, was the Pope’s intention. Many Muslims, however, may see it differently—not as a gesture of brotherhood, but as one of submission and surrender. The word “Islam” means “submission,” and submission is what Islam expects of other faiths. Muslims consider Islam to be the supreme religion. To the extent that it tolerates the “People of the Book” (Christians and Jews), Islam tolerates them on...