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Governor Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, has reportedly been offered a new job as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome. Kansas Public Radio reports Brownback is preparing to leave Kansas to take the job in Italy. KPR reports that it has talked to an anonymous source that calls the appointment a 'done deal.' Gov. Brownback would fill the now-vacant position of U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Agencies for Food and Agriculture.

An ancient legend which holds that the Temple menorah is hidden away in the depths of the Vatican is coming to light again with the announcement of an upcoming exhibit jointly hosted by the Papal seat and Rome’s ancient Jewish community. Intended to showcase the growing Jewish-Vatican relationship, the theme of the exhibit actually brings this sore subject to the forefront, raising suspicions that despite a long tradition of Vatican protests, the rumors persist for good reason. Arnold Nesselrath, a Vatican Museums official, announced the theme of the upcoming exhibit on Monday, noting that the connection between the Vatican and...

A controversial move by a Rome hospital to hire two specialist abortion doctors — because the majority of Italian doctors refuse to carry out the procedure — has caused an outcry. On Thursday, the president of Rome’s order of physicians, Giuseppe Lavra, asked Lazio’s regional governor to repeal the "unjust and discriminatory" call for two pro-abortion gynecologists. The governor, Nicola Zingaretti, had planned for the two doctors to be hired at Rome’s San Camillo hospital — one of the largest in the capital — where they would be tasked specifically with carrying out abortions. Zingaretti wrote in his blog that...

James Erwin was browsing Reddit on his lunch break when a thread piqued his interest. A user called The_Quiet_Earth had posed the question: "Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU?" The question struck a chord with the 37-year-old Erwin, a technical writer from Des Moines, Iowa, who happened to be finishing a book called The Encyclopedia of U.S. Military Actions (Through Facts on File). Erwin tells PM that he wasn't impressed by other users' early attempts to answer this question,...

Posters in Rome were not an insult to the pope, but were providentially arranged for his instruction. Pray that Francis will revisit this matter and learn by it. And let him "dig, dig," that he might discover his own "rigidity" against tradition Pope Francis seems to have taken offense over an anonymous poster campaign which called into question his mercy. On February 4, Romans woke up to more than 200 posters of a stern-faced pope plastered all over the city, with a caption that asks, “But where is your mercy?” The unidentified posters accused Francis of having “ignored cardinals” and...

Italian police have uncovered a major international computer-hacking operation that compromised private communications at the Vatican. Police in Rome announced the arrest of two engineers who are suspected of illicitly obtaining “information relative to state security.” The hackers, who were not identified, were described as London residents in their 40s. They had reportedly gained access to computer servers operated by Italian government leaders and European banking officials. The operation also penetrated the Vatican, police reported. Hackers gained access to computers used by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, at the Pontifical Council for Culture. They also hacked into computers at a Vatican guest...

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...

Rome (AFP) - Italian police were on the hunt Monday for the authors of anti-pope posters which have been slapped around Rome, amid suspicions the campaign may be linked to an arch-conservative wing of the Catholic Church. Dozens of the illegal fliers appeared mysteriously around the Italian capital Saturday picturing a stern-looking Pope Francis, a list of accusations against him, and the words "Where's your mercy?" -- turning the pontiff's call for a more merciful church back on him.

<p>VATICAN CITY (AP) — Conservative criticism of Pope Francis intensified Saturday after his intervention in the Knights of Malta order, with posters appearing around Rome citing his actions against conservative Catholics and asking: "Where's your mercy?"</p> <p>The posters appeared on the same day that Francis cemented his authority over the Knights by naming a top Vatican archbishop, Angelo Becciu, to be his special delegate to the ancient aristocratic order.</p>

Rome woke up this Saturday with something quite new, and very old, in its streets: posters throughout the City (in the style of the old "pasquinate") critical of the Pope. In English, from the Romanesco-inspired Italian: Ah Francis, you have intervened in Congregations, removed priests, decapitated the Order of Malta and the Franciscans of the Immaculate, ignored Cardinals... but where is your mercy? These were common at the time of the Papal States (before the fall of Porta Pia and the full unification of Italy in 1870): not for religious reasons, but rather for political complaints, since the Popes...

Maybe, facing the combined power of Disney and Christmas, orchestra conductor Giacomo Loprieno should have just let it go. At the end of a musical adaptation of the children’s movie “Frozen,” Loprieno stood up after the last notes had died away, with an urge to convey to his young audience an unpalatable truth. “Santa Claus doesn’t exist,” he said. Stunned parents who had taken their kids to the event in Rome on Thursday took to social media to express their fury, the press reported on Saturday. …

Bishop Javier Echevarría Rodríguez, the Prelate of Opus Dei, died Monday evening at the age of 84 in Rome, several days after being hospitalized with pneumonia. According to a Dec. 12 statement from the personal prelature, Bishop Echevarría was given the final sacraments this afternoon by his auxiliary, Msgr. Fernando Ocariz. […] The bishop was born in Madrid in 1932, where he met St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, an organization dedicated to spiritual growth and discipleship among the laity which teaches its members to use their work and their ordinary activities as a way to encounter God....

When people think of Rome they think of the Coliseum, but this year the Coliseum has an ancient athletic rival: the Circus Maximus. After years of excavations and improvements, Rome’s charioteer stadium—the ancient equivalent of a NASCAR track—is finally open to the public. But however you feel about the races there’s plenty of interesting stuff to be seen here; the ancient world’s largest shopping mall, among them. But for my money one of the most interesting features is the well-preserved and very public ancient latrines, which operated with water siphoned from the nearby aqueduct. Bear with me. They’re a testament...

The Pope should welcome them into the Vatican and give them a church to pray in. After all, he just said: “We see, for example, how quickly those among us with the status of a stranger, an immigrant, or a refugee, become a threat, take on the status of an enemy. An enemy because they come from a distant country or have different customs. An enemy because of the color of their skin, their language or their social class. An enemy because they think differently or even have a different faith.” The Pope doesn’t want to be thought of us...

Rome -- The Vatican's Jubilee Year was supposed to draw 20 million Catholics to Rome, where hotels and restaurants were rubbing their hands with glee, waiting to cash in. But two days before the closure of Pope Francis's special Year of Mercy, a disgruntled hospitality trade has slammed it as a flop. "We were expecting much more than this. We did even worse than last year," said Antonio Calicchia, who owns a traditional restaurant a few hundred metres from Saint Peter's Square. "We heard some 20 million pilgrims would be coming to Rome. Where did they hide?" he quipped, bitterly....

Despite a major Muslim protest at the Colosseum against the closure of illegal mosques, Rome police have continued shutting down so-called “garage mosques,” and now Muslims are threatening to invade Saint Peter’s Basilica to pray there. This week, authorities closed down another makeshift mosque in Rome for failure to meet building norms and for non-compliance with safety standards, the sixth such mosque-closing in the last months.In response, Muslims in Rome have threatened to invade the Vatican to pray in Saint Peter’s Basilica, which Italian media are calling Islamic “blackmail.”“As many as 300 people can pray here; where will we go...

The eyes of a visiting archaeologist lit up when he was shown the 10 tiny, tarnished discs that had sat unnoticed in storage for two and a half years at a dig on a southern Japan island. He had been to archaeological sites in Italy and Egypt, and recognized the “little round things” as old coins, including a few likely dating to the Roman Empire. “I was so excited I almost forgot what I was there for, and the coins were all we talked about,” said Toshio Tsukamoto of the Gangoji Institute for Research of Cultural Property in Nara, an...

In 449 B.C., the Roman government passed the Law of the Twelve Tables, regulating much of commercial, social, and family life. Some of these laws were reasonable and consistent with an economy of contract and commerce; others prescribed gruesome punishments and assigned cruel powers and privileges given to some. Other regulations fixed a maximum rate of interest on loans of approximately 8 percent. The Roman government also had the habit of periodically forgiving all interest owed in the society; that is, it legally freed private debtors from having to pay back interest due to private creditors. The Roman government also...

Several different types of sling bullets have been found at the site, from small lead bullets drilled with holes that the researchers think were designed to make a whistling noise in flight and terrorize their targets, to the largest lemon-shaped sling bullets, which weigh up to 2 ounces. "The interesting thing is that all the whistling sling bullets are from the Roman camp on the south face of the hill fort, so clearly they are using different sling bullets for different purposes," Nicholson told Live Science.

Italian police have arrested an African immigrant after the man went on a rampage through four Roman churches, demolishing statues and knocking over candlesticks and reliquaries. The 39-year-old Ghanaian began his destructive spree on Friday evening in the church of San Martino ai Monti, where he shattered a statue before being confronted by the parish priest, after which he fled the premises. Soon afterward the man entered another church full of visiting pilgrims, the ancient Basilica of Santa Prassede, where he demolished the statues of the church’s patron as well as a statue of Saint Anthony, throwing them to the...