Free Republic

"...American conservative Catholics who defend Pope Francis keep saying that Francis is truly orthodox, despite the fact that the liberal US media love him. Maybe they’re right. But the further we go into this pontificate, the more I wonder if liberals understand something about Pope Francis that conservatives do not."

Cardinal Raymond Burke, an American who heads the Vatican’s highest court, says that the Obama administration’s diminution of religious freedom in the United States “is an absolute contradiction of the founding principles of this nation.” Cardinal Burke, who is chief justice of the Vatican’s Apostolic Signatura, made his remarks during a Dec. 13 interview with EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on the program, The World Over. …

Tuesday’s Good Morning America simply didn’t have its facts straight in their rush to portray Pope Francis as a crypto-liberal. Amy Robach hyped that the pontiff “removed an outspoken critic of abortion and same-sex marriage from a powerful post within the Church. Conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke…was head of the Vatican’s highest court.” Robach then asserted that “this move is seen as reinforcing the Pope’s vision for a more inclusive church.” However, Cardinal Burke is still the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura – the equivalent of the Supreme Court for the Catholic Church. The Pope actually declined...

U.S. plan gives Jerusalem holy sites to Vatican International mandate to control sections of Israel's capital TEL AVIV – Secretary of State John Kerry quietly presented a U.S. plan for eastern Jerusalem that calls for an international administrative mandate to control holy sites in the area, according to informed Palestinian and Israeli diplomatic sources. The exact composition of the international mandate is up for discussion, the sources said, but Kerry’s plan recommended a coalition that includes the Vatican, together with a group of Muslim countries such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The international arrangement is being proposed as a temporary...

President Obama’s decision to close the Vatican embassy—moving the ambassador and his staff into shared office space in the building housing the U. S. Embassy to Italy—is viewed by many, including several former ambassadors to the Vatican, as yet another attempt by the Obama administration to further marginalize the influence of the Holy See.While the Obama administration cites security concerns in an email to the Daily Caller (after the September, 11, 2012 attack on our embassy in Benghazi, Libya) as the reason for the closure, James Nicholson, the ambassador to the Vatican from 2001 until 2005, described the move as...

The Vatican Insider newspaper in Italy reported my comments responding to Pope Francis that “Jesus Christ is weeping in heaven hearing Christians espouse a socialist philosophy that has created suffering and poverty around the world. It is impossible to love one’s neighbor as yourself without fighting against socialism,” I hope to explain further and propose solutions. Initially, at least this new Pope Francis is trying. Francis obviously cares. News reports say that Francis is sending the Vatican guards and other staff to go out at night within the City of Rome to help the homeless and the poor. This is...

 The University of Oxford and the Vatican have jointly created a digital project that will put online over 1.5 million pages of medieval and biblical texts. The four-year project will digitize the collections of the Bodleian Libraries and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) related to their Hebrew manuscripts, Greek manuscripts and fifteenth-century printed books. They include a Gutenberg Bible from 1455, an autographed and annotated manuscript of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, and the oldest surviving Hebrew codex.The project is funded by a $3.2 million grant from the Polonsky Foundation. Dr Leonard Polonsky said, “In today’s fast-paced, digital-driven world of scholarship, easy...

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama likes what he sees from Pope Francis, who has called for a more humble Catholic Church that sides with the poor. Obama offered praise to the new pontiff in an interview with MSNBC's "Hardball" on Thursday, saying Francis has used the power of his office to remind people of their obligations to others and future generations.

<p>Thomas Williams, the onetime public face of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order who left the priesthood after admitting he fathered a child, is getting married this weekend to the child's mother, The Associated Press has learned. The bride is the daughter of former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon, one of Pope Francis' top advisers.</p>

3D modeling depicted in the 2010 documentary The Real Face of Jesus? as seen on The History Channel.For those who believe the Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus, here is some breaking news: The Custodian of the Shroud at the Vatican has announced today that the Shroud will go on public display in 2015 in Turin, Italy for 45 days between the Easter season starting in mid-April 2015 until August 16, 2015. The last time the Shroud went on public display was in 2010 and two million pilgrims got to see the most sacred relic in...

<p>VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Access to the Gutenberg Bible and other ancient manuscripts has just gotten easier.</p> <p>The Vatican Library and Oxford University's Bodleian Library put the first of 1.5 million pages of their precious manuscripts online Tuesday, bringing their collections to a global audience for the first time.</p>

Katie Scrivener worried that her infant son, Fulton, would cry when he encountered a very important man in Rome. She was the one who wound up weeping, albeit tears of joy. One of the enduring images that came out of the weekly general audience Pope Francis gave in St. Peter’s Square Nov. 20 has the pontiff trading gazes with Fulton Scrivener, who will celebrate his first birthday Dec. 19. In a photo that ran the next day on Page 1 of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, the Holy Father shows unabashed joy as he places his right hand on the...

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has ramped up the Vatican’s charity work, sending his chief alms-giver and a contingent of Swiss guards onto the streets of Rome at night to do what he usually can’t do: comfort the poor and the homeless. A few times a week, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski takes a few off-duty guards with him in his modest white Fiat to make the rounds at Rome’s train stations, where charities offer makeshift soup kitchens that feed 400-500 people a night. Often they bring the leftovers from the Vatican mess halls to share. [snip] Larger and longer-term charity works...

A helpful summary of the Apostolic Exhortation, "Evangelii Gaudium" A copy of the apostolic exhortation "Evangelii Gaudium" ("The Joy of the Gospel") by Pope Francis is seen during a news conference at the Vatican Nov. 26. (CNS photo/Alessandro Bianchi, Reuters)by Carl E. OlsonVia Vatican Information Services, a good guide to the Holy Father's Apostolic Exhoration, which is over 52,000 words long (Benedict XVI's Apostolic Exhoration, "Verbum Domini", was about 47,000 words long):SYNTHESIS OF THE APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION “THE JOY OF THE GOSPEL” Vatican City, 26 November 2013 (VIS) - “The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of...

The U.S. State Department is blaming its decision to close the U.S. embassy at the Vatican on the Benghazi terrorist attack, saying that the Vatican—which is the seat of the Roman Catholic Church and the home of the pope—is not safe enough for U.S. diplomats. “Security is our top priority in making this move,” the State Department said in a statement sent to CNSNews.com by department spokesperson Nicole Thompson. … “This move will also save the U.S. government money,” said the department’s statement. “The Embassy to the Holy See will move into unused space on the U.S. government compound in...

Discuss Current Situation in Syria, Promoting Peaceful Solution to ConflictRussian President Vladimir Putin was received in the Vatican Apostolic Palace by Pope Francis this evening. The meeting is the first between the Russian head of state and the Holy Father. During the meeting, which was said to have lasted roughly 35 minutes, President Putin and the Holy Father discussed several topics of interest, including the fundamental contribution of Christianity in Russia. A communique released by the Holy See stated that particular attention was placed on current situation in the Middle East, especially in Syria. President Putin, the communique cotinued, expressed...

Pope Francis said Tuesday in his first apostolic exhortation that no matter how progressive-minded the world turns, the Catholic Church can never compromise on its “no abortion” rule — it’s a matter of human dignity. “I want to be completely honest in this regard,” he said, Catholic News Service reported. “This is not something subject to alleged reforms or ‘modernizations.’ It is not ‘progressive’ to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life.” The statement comes in sharp contrast to some in the political world, of mostly liberal and left-of-center progressive mind, who claim loyalty to the Catholic faith,...

The Vatican has released Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [Joy of the Gospel], one of the most important papal documents on evangelization of the past five decades.

Unlike DC, right Beelzebub? If there's anything we weary clingers have learned from the living Hell that is the Obama era, it's 'Ignore what he says- watch what he does'- how else to try and get a handle on such an oily reptile... one that lies habitually without a trace of compunction? So while the Bolshevik Boy Wonder's claiming to be friends with Israel, he's putting the screws to Israel... and when he talks bipartisanship and fiscal responsibility, Obama's actions consistently betray severe hostility towards both of these disingenuously-claimed ideals.  And this is a guy who still says he's 'a Christian'...