Free Republic

[Catholic Caucus] Francis' Obsession with Vestments ContinuesFashion style is a recurring obsession in Francis' "Magisterium", for example when he repeatedly tells priests and seminarians what to wear and what not to wear.This obsession has reached a new level. A year after the death of Benedict XVI, the supreme commander of Santa Marta ordered his master of ceremonies and the staff of the sacristy of St Peter's to remove the coat of arms of Benedict XVI from a set of chasubles in four of the five liturgical colours, writes SilereNonPossum.com (31 December).The coat of arms will be replaced by the tiara...

CNA Staff, Jul 5, 2023 / 15:10 pm Pope Francis met with former U.S. President Bill Clinton in a private audience at the Casa Santa Marta papal residence on Wednesday. Clinton’s delegation included several prominent Americans, including Alex Soros of the Open Society Foundations. Clinton, who now focuses his efforts on philanthropy and public affairs, had visited Albania July 3-4 and received from the Albanian prime minister a public gratitude medal for his support of Albania and for NATO's intervention in the Kosovo War, the news site Euractiv reports. Soros, son of the billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros, accompanied...

Until now the Pellicano wiretapping case has seemed the kind of down-and-dirty imbroglio that could only happen in Hollywood, where a private eye's underworld patois could impress movie people familiar with noir clichés, allured by real physical danger and accustomed to getting whatever they want. But confidential F.B.I. records show that the scandal's tentacles have extended beyond show-business figures to reach people prominent in the rarified worlds of fine art and classical music. Among the government's most important witnesses, the F.B.I. records suggest, are Adam D. Sender, a prominent collector of contemporary art and a wealthy hedge-fund manager..........hired Anthony Pellicano,...

Artist responsible for "Piss Christ" guest of Pope in Vatican This week the Pope welcomed artists to the Sistierne Chapel, reminding them that true beauty inspires the desire for God, and renders glory to Him, for the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of the Vatican Museums’ Collection of Modern Art by Pope St. Paul VI.One of them was Andres Serrano. There is nothing beautiful about his work.He is notorious for "Piss Christ", a photo of a crucifix submerged in his own urine which was destroyed by protestors in 2012, only for the a restored/or replaced version to be sold at...

Ex–grand chancellor: Pope's reforms are catastrophic for Order of MaltaVATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - Knights across the world are considering leaving the Catholic Church because of Pope Francis' reforms, the former grand chancellor of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta revealed. In a confidential letter obtained by Church Militant, Albrecht von Boeselager lamented that many confreres had expressed to him "their great disappointment in the Holy Father — they could no longer regard him as the father he promised to be for the order." Boeselager sent the letter to an elite group of knights after Pope Francis issued a Sept. 3...

A Catholic priest was among four people sentenced on Monday over the shooting of a bishop-elect in South Sudan. A judge at the high court in the capital Juba issued the sentences on April 25 after Father John Mathiang Machol, Moris Sebit Ater, Laat Makur Agok, and Samuel Makir were found guilty of “participating directly or indirectly” in the attempted assassination of the now Bishop Christian Carlassare of Rumbek. Justice Alexander Sebur Subek gave Father Mathiang a seven-year jail term in connection with the attack on the Italian-born member of the Comboni Missionaries, who was shot in both legs on...

Former Google CEO and Clinton lackey Eric Schmidt is being considered to lead a key tech task force in a Biden administration, according to a report in the Financial Times. Even though the election result is still disputed by President Donald Trump and the Republicans, Joe Biden is already forming his transition team, which includes many former Silicon Valley employees, including Schmidt. According to the Financial Times (paywalled), presidential contender Biden has: hired both Jessica Hertz, former associate general counsel at Facebook, and Cynthia Hogan, former Apple vice-president for government affairs to his transition team. Eric Schmidt, the former Google...

Vatican spy story takes center stage as fraud trial resumesVATICAN CITY — The Vatican's big fraud and extortion trial resumes Friday after exposing some unseemly realities of how the Holy See operates, with a new spy story taking center stage that is more befitting of a 007 thriller than the inner workings of a papacy.According to written testimony obtained Thursday, one of Pope Francis' top advisers brought in members of the Italian secret service to sweep his office for bugs and commissioned intelligence reports from them, completely bypassing the Vatican's own police force in the process.The reported actions of Archbishop...

The U.S. military mission to evacuate American citizens and foreign allies from Afghanistan was hampered by continuous appeals for help from an array of advocates including White House officials, members of Congress, veterans of the war, media outlets and even the Vatican, according to the operation’s senior commander.

The trial, which began in July and will resume on Dec. 14, has yet to get off the ground after procedural disputes over missing transcripts related to the prosecution’s investigations. Four of the original 10 defendants have had their charges at least temporarily dropped, leaving just six defendants currently on trial.VATICAN CITY — A key element in the ongoing Vatican trial over a London property deal that led to massive financial losses for the Holy See is how Vatican officials came to sign off on agreements in 2018 that caused the Vatican the most damage. A 487-page indictment published ahead...

Cardinal George Pell will be immediately freed from prison after Australia's High Court unanimously overturned his conviction on five counts of historical child sex abuse. The momentous decision, handed down Tuesday by Chief Justice Susan Kiefel, ends a five-year legal battle that started when a man in his 30s approached police alleging Pell had abused him as a child in the mid-1990s. At the time, Pell was Vatican Treasurer and the highest ranking Catholic official to ever be publicly accused of child sex offenses. Pell strenuously denied the charges, which he dismissed in a 2016 police interview as a "product...

The former prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy sat down for an interview on his three-volume 'Prison Journal' touching on his incarceration, Cardinal Becciu and Vatican finances. When Cardinal George Pell took a leave of absence in 2018 from his post as the inaugural prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy and returned to Australia to stand trial for his “historic sexual abuse” case, he was the highest ranking Church official to be swept up in a decades-long global scandal that has shattered victims and wreaked havoc on the Church’s moral credibility. Convicted in 2018, he would spend...

Pope Francis appeared to take a shot at Hungary on Wednesday, insisting “no country can exempt itself” from the obligation to take in migrants. On Tuesday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán rejected a ruling by the European Union’s (EU) Court of Justice that his government had “failed to fulfil its obligations” to relax its immigration laws. “We will maintain the existing regime, even if the European court ordered us to change it,” Orbán said Tuesday in his end-of-year news conference. “The reality is that we have to stop the migrants at the borders,” he declared. “This can be solved by...

Pope Francis celebrates five openly Marxist organizations: ‘You are…a veritable invisible army’'You are, as I said in the letter I sent you last year, a veritable invisible army; you are a fundamental part of that humanity that fights for life against a system of death,' Pope Francis told a number of openly professed Marxist groups in a video published on the Vatican News YouTube Channel. The text below is the script for the video report.(Lepanto Institute) A few weeks ago, the Lepanto Institute produced a report showing the direct connections the Vatican has with an international Communist organization called the...

President Biden on Friday cruised through Rome with an 85-vehicle motorcade — drawing criticism for the poor optics ahead of a global warming summit in Glasgow, Scotland, to which Biden is bringing about a dozen top US officials. “Biden arriving at the Vatican. His motorcade is lonnnnnng,” tweeted Washington Post reporter Chico Harlan, along with a video of the procession. “#Decarbonize this,” one person captioned the video. “America’s Marie Antoinette class is Washington’s elites – and that shows it,” another person responded. Biden routinely says there’s a “climate crisis” caused by fossil fuels. It’s unclear how many of the motorcade...

In Glasgow Francis Will Be a No-Show. In His Place Will Be GretaIn Glasgow, at the United Nations conference on climate change to be held from October 31 to November 12, Francis will not be there. He has removed the trip from his schedule. But if he is not going - Father Thomas Reese, former editor of the Jesuit weekly “America,” proposed to his confrere Pope - why not include Greta Thunberg in the Vatican delegation? Why not give none other than her the pope’s seat? Not outside the conference, to demonstrate with the people oppressed by the politicians’ vacuous...

Pope Demands Silicon Valley “In the Name of God” Censor “Hate Speech,” “Conspiracy Theories”Pope Francis thinks empowering giant corporations to silence free speech is Godly.Pope Francis invoked God in an effort to pressure Silicon Valley giants into censoring more content, including “hate speech” and “conspiracy theories.”Yes, really.The Pope made the remarks during a World Meeting of Popular Movements, a shadowy organization created to promote “social justice” and fight racism with the help of religious leaders.“In the name of God, I ask the technology giants to stop exploiting human weakness, people’s vulnerability, for the sake of profits without caring about the...

Russia has unambiguously stated its position that the self-ruling island of Taiwan is a part of the mainland-based People's Republic of China, as strategic partners Moscow and Beijing seek to further align their positions regarding geopolitical issues across the globe. During his visit Tuesday to the Kazakh capital of Nur-Sultan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared Moscow's stance on the issue. "Russia, like the overwhelming majority of other countries, considers Taiwan to be part of the People's Republic of China," Lavrov said. "We have proceeded and will proceed from this premise in our foreign policy." Only 14 countries today, along...

Audiences, 09.10.2021 This morning, the Holy Father Francis received in audience: - The Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America, with her husband and entourage; https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2021/10/09/211009b.html

ROME – On Friday the U.S. State Department confirmed a European tour for United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken next week that will include stops in Italy and the Vatican, where he is expected to meet with top Holy See officials. According to the State Department’s June 18 communique, Blinken’s tour will last from June 22-29. He will first visit Berlin and Paris before coming to Italy, making stops in Rome, the Vatican, Bari, and Matera. While in Rome, he will co-chair a meeting of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS alongside Italian Foreign Minister Luigi De Maio, and...