Free Republic

White House evangelical Pastor Paul Begley said first lady Melania Trump demanded that the White House be spiritually cleansed and that pagan, demonic items and artificats from the Obama and Clinton years be removed. Melania Trump reportedly said, “I’m not going to go into that White House unless it has been completely exorcised,” according to Pastor Begley. One thing was left, a cross on the wall. “They cleansed the White House,” he said. “They had people in there anointing it with oil and praying everywhere.”

<p>China is the country that had a remarkably successful try at enforcing a one-child policy, promoting massive abortion (a figure of more than 300 million has been suggested) — sex-selective, with boys highly favored for birth, girls for elimination — enforced sterilization, and execution of criminals. And, of course, the one-party state persecutes the Church and imprisons human-rights advocates. Bishop Sánchez, who said he had been to China and seen all this good work in person, so it must be true, probably wouldn’t agree with Cardinal Joseph Zen, the bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, who recently protested the imminent decision of the Vatican to recognize the government-sponsored, quisling “Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.” That move would be at the expense of the members of the “underground” Catholic Church, which has stayed loyal to the Vatican and suffered persecution for decades. Zen said that the Vatican, and by that he means Pope Francis, was “ready to surrender to the Chinese Communist Party” — again, perfectly fine if it excelled at implementing the social doctrine of the Church.</p>

The Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences tweeted yesterday without comment a New York Times article about people using birth control to stop having children because of "climate change" fear.  The alarmist New York Times article said some people are “acutely aware that having a child is one of the costliest actions they can take environmentally” and are therefore using artificial contraception to prevent that from happening.

full title: TurkeyÂ’s Erdogan to meet with Pope, thank him for opposing TrumpÂ’s recognition of Jerusalem as IsraelÂ’s capital. The United StatesÂ’ controversial recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is expected to dominate talks between President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan and Pope Francis on the presidentÂ’s first trip to the Vatican on Sunday. According to presidential sources, ErdoÄŸan will thank Pope Francis for his stance against U.S. President Donald TrumpÂ’s decision and his efforts to protect the status quo in the holy city. The Turkish president previously expressed his appreciation to Pope Francis who strongly opposed the bitterly-contested move...

Pope Francis received a victim’s letter in 2015 that graphically detailed sexual abuse at the hands of a priest and a cover-up by Chilean church authorities, contradicting the Pope’s recent insistence that no victims had come forward, the letter’s author and members of Pope Francis’ own sex- abuse commission have told The Associated Press. The fact that Pope Francis received the eight-page letter, obtained by the AP, challenges his insistence that he has “zero tolerance” for sex abuse and cover-ups. It also calls into question his stated empathy with abuse survivors, compounding the most serious crisis of his five-year papacy....

Francis, “I Don’t Go To The Doctor But To The Witch”During Pope Francis' flight to Chile on January 15, Cristiana Caricato of the Italian Bishops' TV 2000 asked Francis, what medicines he takes to keep fit during his travels. He replied, “I don't go to the doctor, I go to the witch.” Franca Giansoldati of Il Messaggero asked him if he is afraid of journalists and their questions.Francis answered, "Yes, I am afraid of interviews... you can see what I need to do." Picture: © mazur, catholicnews.org.uk, CC BY-SA, #newsZfdutcvulh

There are rumours circulating that an embattled, deceitful and thoroughly discredited pontificate - at least discredited among faithful Catholics following events carefully - seeks to draw the clergy of the Holy Catholic Church, by coercive means, into a new vow of obedience in particular to Pope Francis and his own 'unique' Magisterium. I shudder at such rumours. Are these rumours true? We do not yet know. How do such rumours evolve? Who wishes these things to circulate? Are they credible? Should it be taken seriously? Only the last question can I answer and only with an opinion. I fear so. I...

Released in December, the image is a warning against every conflict and a condemnation of today’s “piecemeal Third World War”“The fruit of war...”. To the journalists who accompany him on his flight from Fiumicino to Santiago de Chile, the first stop of his apostolic journey to Chile and Peru, the Pope wanted to distribute the photo of the child who, after the atomic bombardment of Nagasaki, in 1945, is carrying his dead brother on his shoulders to a crematorium. A brutal image taken by American photographer Joseph Roger O’ Donnell, that the Pope already wanted to be printed and distributed...

In November, two external researchers received a warning from the Catholic University of Milan because of their adherence to the Filial Correctio. Marco Tosatti has published a letter of one of them on his blog. In December, they discovered that they had been eliminated from the list of collaborators of the university. Contrary to what they were promised, they did not receive a contract for January. The two were never contacted personally. In the meantime, the university cancelled their previous activities from its webpage. One of the victims is Dr Giuseppe Reguzzoni. He was for more than twenty years an...

Would Pope Francis say anything about this year’s Vatican nativity scene — which was so clearly meant as a nod to the LGBT lobby — when he paid it a visit on New Year’s Eve? He spoke not a word of course, but instead blessed it and chuckled as a few dignitaries, responsible for what some have called a “hideous” and “sacrilegious” crèche, gave him a guided tour. And yet something very eerie and ominous happened that evening. At exactly the same time as the Pope left St. Peter’s Basilica and walked to the crèche in St. Peter’s Square, a...

Almost exactly a year after they issued a call for prayer that the pope would uphold Catholic teaching on marriage, three bishops from Kazakhstan — Tomash Peta, Metropolitan Archbishop of the archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana, Jan Pawel Lenga, Archbishop-Bishop emeritus of Karaganda, and Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of the archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana — have issued a new statement, saying that any change in sacramental discipline that would allow Catholic divorcees living in new sexual unions to receive Holy Communion is “alien to the entire Tradition of the Catholic and Apostolic faith”. One year ago this...

After the secular press leaked to the Catholic world hidden evidence of the massive scandal in the Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa, presided over by the “Vice-Pope” Cardinal Maradiaga of Honduras, Pope Francis rushed to defend his friend, telling him “do not you worry.” [sic] It is already clear that Maradiaga will be protected despite the testimony of 50 witnesses regarding the endemic corruption in the Archdiocese - of which Maradiaga could not have been unaware - including monthly payments to him of some $40,000 for years from the Catholic University of Honduras. And now it seems another friend of Francis is...

Secular media outlets are taking interest in the country's increasingly conservative, Catholic directionPoland’s bishops’ conference has launched an English-language Twitter account, as international interest in the country and the Catholic Church there continues to grow. “We are observing a lot of internet interest about the Church in Poland from people living abroad, which is why we want to enable them to access the content of our Twitter posts in the English language,” said spokesman Fr Paweł Ryteł-Andrianik. The @ChurchinPoland account will post information about events in the country’s Catholic Church, comments from the bishop’s conference, and tweets concerning significant Church...

Pope Francis will meet Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the Vatican next week, the Holy See announced on Friday, as Palestinians continue to clash with Israeli forces over US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. […] The pope and King Abdullah, the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City, are likely to discuss the situation, though the Vatican never indicates topics of discussion for such meetings in advance. On Sunday, the pope called for “respect of the status quo” in Jerusalem and warned against “a new spiral of violence”. Abdullah has denounced the...

WASHINGTON, D.C. –The Little Sisters of the Poor and their hard-fought rights will be on trial Thursday, December 14, but the Sisters will be outside the courthouse because of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s attempt to silence them. Shapiro is suing to take away the Sisters’ religious exemption from a Health and Human Services rule. In early October, HHS issued a new rule that protects the Little Sisters of the Poor and other religious non-profits from providing services in their health care plan that violate their faith like the week-after pill. The Little Sisters’ four-year legal ordeal was close to...

@import url("chrome://global/skin/aboutReaderContent.css"); A woman walks past an anti-Pope Francis poster in Rome (Getty Images) The book, published under a pseudonym, makes numerous allegations about the Pope's behaviourA search is on for the author of a new book about the Pope which accuses him of being a “dictator”.Published on Kindle in English and in Italian, The Dictator Pope appears under the pseudonym “Marcantonio Colonna”, the name of an admiral who fought at the Battle of Lepanto.Colonna claims to be an Oxford-educated historian now based in Rome. His book tells the story of Francis’s pontificate, as well as his life before...

Lately, Chavez declared himself a member of a charismatic congregation, thus allegedly belonging to his country's fastest-growing branch of Christianity. But then he angered the country's National Catholic Bishops Conference by communing at a Mass organized by a priest of pro-Communist leanings. Should you have any doubt that Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is in serious decline, consider this: His bust is being removed from the altars of his country's popular religion, a renowned anthropologist told United Press International on Monday. Less than four years ago, the syncretistic Maria Lionza cult celebrated Chavez as the reincarnation of Simon Bolivar, (1783-1830),...

On January 13, Robert González Nieves, archbishop of San Juan, revealed Pope Francis’ role in Barack Obama’s pardon of terrorist mastermind Oscar Lopez-Rivera. Speaking from the Cathedral of San Juan, Nieves announced that although the Holy Father made no public statement of his involvement, he had indeed worked behind the curtain on behalf of the unrepentant, bloody-handed Lopez-Rivera. The archbishop was pleased to say: “I know that there have been efforts made through diplomatic channels. The pope is very aware. We are grateful to the Holy Father for his support.” Papal complicity in this politically charged act received little notice...

Pope Francis needs to take tougher action against the United States’ most influential Catholic in Rome, Cardinal Raymond “Breitbart” Burke. The renegade cleric is not only undermining Francis’s reformist, compassionate papacy, and gospel teaching as it applies to refugees and Muslims, but the rebel prince of the church is also using his position within the walls of the Vatican to legitimize extremist forces that want to bring down Western liberal democracy, Stephen K. Bannon-style. Simply put, the Vatican is facing a political war between the modernizing Pope Francis and a conservative wing that wants to reassert white Christian dominance. Burke...

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) officials knew about environmental data manipulation for years before they stopped the manipulation or notified scientists who may have used phony information, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has found. A USGS analyst resigned while under investigation for data manipulation from 1996 to 2008, but another analyst continued that distortion until 2014. But agency officials learned data was manipulated as early as 2004 when scientists found “test results did not make sense” and “were not accurate,” according to a Department of the Interior inspector general (IG) audit published 11 years later. “Our office wasn’t aware of...