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That Jesus commanded His disciples—of which I am one—to love “the poor” is beyond dispute. Equally beyond dispute, however, is that, regardless of what growing legions of left-leaning clerics would have us believe, Jesus never—never ever—addressed the issue of “inequality.” The head of my church and the most visible religious leader on the world stage today, Pope Francis, is as guilty a culprit as is anyone on this score. The Pope made headlines on more than a few occasions since his tenure began when His Holiness condemned “inequality” generally, and the traditional American economic system in particular, with a bluntness...

"For generations now, we have denied the food of revealed truth to our children; and we have permitted the moral polluters to dump their garbage into our culture with abandon. Why then, are we surprised that ours has become a stunted and sick society?" - Patrick J. Buchanan The times are growing very dark. Everywhere signs are emerging which point to the appearance of the Man of Sin. A Brazilian heavy metal band is announcing the Age of Antichrist (see here). We have a Pontiff who preaches a "live and let live" philosophy (see here) which is nothing less than...

Pope Francis walks onstage with Giovanni Traettino, a Protestant pastor and his friend, in Caserta, Italy, July 28. Pope Francis said he knew people would be shocked that he would make such a trip outside of Rome to visit a group of Pentecostals, "but I went to visit my friends." (CNS photo/ L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters) VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- His voice breaking with emotion, Giovanni Traettino, a Pentecostal pastor in southern Italy and longtime friend of Pope Francis, welcomed the pope, "my beloved brother," to his partially built church in Caserta. Pope Francis said he knows some people were...

Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput announced today at a conference in Fargo, North Dakota that Pope Francis has accepted his invitation to come to Philadelphia in September 2015 to attend the World Meeting of Families. Chaput's announcement confirmed rumors that the Supreme Pontiff was coming to the United States. The World Meeting of Families is an event held every three years by the Pontifical Council of the Family. Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J. confirmed that the Bishop of Rome was indeed coming to Philadelphia for the event, and was also mulling offers to visit other major cities on the East...

With all the horrible news for Christians in Iraq and elsewhere, there is one bright spot. While we slept, Sudanese Christian Meriam Ibrahim arrived in Italy. As the UK Telegraph reports, the 27-year-old woman, who was spared a death sentence for apostasy in June for refusing to renounce Christianity, landed in Rome where she is to meet Pope Francis before traveling to the U.S. I know she will appreciate all of you who prayed for her and her children and her perseverance through an almost year long-ordeal. Ibrahim and her family were flown to Italy in a government aircraft to...

Meriam Ibrahim arrives safely in Italy, meets Pope Francis July 24, 2014 08:17 ESTBy Catherine HarmonMeriam Ibrahim and her family meet with Pope Francis at the Casa Santa Marta July 24 (photo via Vatican Radio).The Sudanese Christian woman who was imprisoned and sentenced to death for apostasy arrived safely in Italy today with her husband and two young children, and met with Pope Francis at his Casa Santa Marta residence, Vatican Radio reports. Ibrahim was sentenced to death in May for converting from Islam and marrying a Christian. She gave birth to her second child while imprisoned and, while her...

Pope Francis has met privately with a Sudanese mother in Rome who was put on death row for refusing to renounce her Christian faith and become a Muslim. The Vatican said Pope Francis had 'a very affectionate' meeting with Meriam Ibrahim, 27, her husband and their two small children. Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the pope 'thanked her for her faith and courage, and she thanked him for his prayer and solidarity' during the half-hour meeting. He blessed Ms Ibrahim as she held her baby daughter Maya in her arms whom she gave birth to in prison two...

There’s plenty of bad news already coming over the transom today and we’ll get to all of it, but one story we’ve followed here has a happy ending. Meriam Yahia Ibrahim, the woman sentenced to death in Sudan for her Christian faith, has left Khartoum and landed in Rome, greeted by Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi at the airport. Italy helped the US mediate her release with Sudanese officials in a quiet effort launched a few weeks ago:

I read at Il Giornale today that the prayer read by the Imam in the Vatican Gardens was indeed from the Sura 2, wherein Allah is asked to crush infidels (that’s us) and let Islam triumph over the whole world (that’s us, too). Vatican Radio, at the time, tried to give this an allegorical spin. It didn’t work very well. At a certain point it seems they also tried to edit out the troubling passage. Suffice to say that an Imam sang: “grant us victory over the heathen/disbelieving/infidel” (Sura 2: 286) in the Vatican Gardens, in front of the Pope,...

"Perhaps the Catholic church would volunteer to pony up some cash for the illegals' care then? Hmm?" "Pope should stay out of it. Matter of civil laws, not church laws." "Thinking that the pope should want the illegals to go to Argentina to get better soccer players for World Cup." Those were just three Twitter responses I was tagged in, in response to a headline about Pope Francis calling so many of us out on our indifference. Based on some of the reactions, you would have thought Pope Francis himself was giving unaccompanied minors rides in his Popemobile into the...

Our friend Mike Voris is suggesting the proper response to Pope Francis style of saying every thought that comes into his head no matter how unwise or unsound is to wait a few days until the Vatican can crack the code and tell us what he meant. Here is a transcript. Even if Catholics ignore a year and a half of the consistent messages that moral theology and commandments can be violated and will not result in a judgment and adjudication from Christ, evangelism should be about what should be done with money, the economy, lonely people, teenage unemployment and...

Pope Francis has thanked those who seek to,"..recover man[kind], restoring him to the centre of reflection and the centre of life. 'He is the king of the universe'! he exclaimed. 'And this is not theology, it is philosophy and human reality.'" (See here). Does Pope Francis really mean to convey that theology has nothing to do with "human reality." As I have said so many times before, the retreat from truth is necessary before the reign of Antichrist. See here for example. There is a preparation. Many are "intellectualizing" themselves into dissent and apostasy from the true Faith. The battlefield...

I begin with a piece, spotted by Fr Tim Finigan and reported in his indispensable blog The Hermeneutic of Continuity, which had been published in Sandro Magister’s blog—not his English one, Chiesa, but his Italian language blog for L’Espresso, Settimo Cielo.A few days ago, Magister told the story of a parish priest in the Italian diocese of Novara, Fr Tarcisio Vicario, who recently discussed the question of Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried. This is how he explained the Church’s teaching on the matter: “For the Church, which acts in the name of the Son of God, marriage...

In a Monday letter to a Mexico City Vatican conference, Pope Francis wrote that the tens of thousands of Central American children illegally crossing into the United States should be “welcomed and protected.” Just days after President Obama visited Texas and pledged a solution to the US border crisis, the Pope said migrant children’s human rights are being violated. “Many people forced to emigrate suffer, and often, die tragically,” he said. “Many of their rights are violated. They are obliged to separate from their families and, unfortunately, continue to be the subject of racist and xenophobic attitudes.” The Pope also...

Some Papal Quotes that somehow and in some way beyond my meager intellect are in continuity with each other, or something. First Quote Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441. ex cathedra (infallibly defined): “The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so...

Pope Francis has been quoted as saying that reliable data indicates that "about 2%" of clergy in the Catholic Church are paedophiles. The Pope said that abuse of children was like "leprosy" infecting the Church, according to the Italian La Repubblica newspaper. He vowed to "confront it with the severity it demands". But a Vatican spokesman said the quotes in the newspaper did not correspond to Pope Francis's exact words. The BBC's David Willey in Rome says there is often a studied ambiguity in Pope Francis' off-the-cuff statements. He wants to show a more compassionate attitude towards Church teaching than...

The third installment in Pope Francis’ series of interviews with atheist reporter Eugenio Scalfari took place on Thursday, July 10, 2014, and was published the following Sunday (07/13/14) in La Repubblica daily. Being that Scalfari doesn’t record these interviews on tape, but, rather, re-prints the dialogue based upon his memory of the interview, we can only say what the Pope Francis ‘allegedly’ said in them. One of the things that the Pope allegedly told Scalfari is that he wants to continue these interviews is because he “believes that an interview with a non-believer is mutually stimulating.” Typical of Scalfari’s interviews,...

Pope Francis promised "solutions" to the issue of priestly celibacy in an interview on Sunday that raised the possibility the Catholic Church could eventually lift a ban on married priests, but was quickly refuted by the VaticanVATICAN CITY: Pope Francis promised "solutions" to the issue of priestly celibacy in an interview on Sunday that raised the possibility the Catholic Church could eventually lift a ban on married priests, but was quickly refuted by the Vatican. Interviewed by Italy's La Repubblica daily, Francis also condemned child sex abuse as a "leprosy" in the Church and cited his aides as saying that...

The Pope's visit to the church is likely to be 'extremely quick' (CNS) Pope Francis will pay a brief “private visit” to the Italian church of a Pentecostal pastor he knew from Argentina, a Vatican spokesman has said.The visit to the Evangelical Church of Reconciliation in Caserta, about 130 miles south of Rome, “is under study and likely would take place July 26″, said Fr Federico Lombardi.Fr Lombardi said the Pope knew the church’s pastor, Giovanni Traettino, from Buenos Aires, where the Pentecostal pastor participated in ecumenical events with Catholics, especially Catholics belonging to the charismatic renewal movement. The then-Cardinal...

What does it take to produce the first-ever papal high-five? A meeting with American televangelists, apparently. The gesture came during a three-hour meeting of Pope Francis and Texas televangelists Kenneth Copeland and James Robison, just weeks after the pontiff met with televangelist Joel Osteen and other religious leaders. At the June 24 meeting, Robison said he was so moved by Pope Francis’ message of the gospel that he asked the translator to ask Francis for a high-five. The pope obliged, raised his arm and the two men smacked hands. The televangelists are among some wealthier U.S. evangelicals who have recently...