Free Republic

Last week the Vatican Insider—ordinarily a solid source of news and reasonable analysis from Rome—published a remarkable piece with an inflammatory headline, “Catholics who are anti-Francis but love Putin.” The article is troubling, for several reasons: +The article seeks to convey the impression that there is a conspiracy against Pope Francis. “The attack against Francis is global,” the authors write, a bit breathlessly. +The authors lump together disparate groups and individuals, with very different ideas and priorities, as if they formed a united front of opposition to the papacy. All those who have questioned public statements by Pope Francis are...

McDonald’s plan to open its first restaurant in Vatican City has prompted criticism from cardinals living above the proposed site. The fast food giant is reportedly willing to pay “a few tens of thousands of euros per month” to rent a property within sight of St Peter’s Square, according to the Guardian. Cardinals claim that they were not consulted by APSA, the Vatican agency that owns the property, about the plans. Instead, residents were only informed after APSA had agreed to rent the ground floor of the property to McDonald’s. Cardinal Elio Sgreccia told LaRepubblica: “It’s a controversial, perverse decision...

The government of Israel has taken the unusual step of asking the Vatican for help in preventing a UNESCO vote denying any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount or the Western Wall. […] Israel’s Ambassador to the Vatican, Oren David, contacted Antoine Camilleri, the Vatican’s Undersecretary for Relations with States to ask that the Vatican work to convince UNESCO’s member states to vote against a Palestinian initiative which would refer to the Western Wall and Temple Mount by their Arabic names and only use the Hebrew terms for the sites in quotation marks. Israel has tried to make the point...

The drip, drip, drip of more leaked Soros’ Open Society Foundation (OSF) documents surfaced in the DCLeaks website to illustrate the ongoing unholy alliance between George Soros and Pope Francis. The Pope appears in the weekly OSF reports as the subject of laudatory and strategic accounts of papal pronouncements and actions promoting Soros’ ‘new normal’ of massive Muslim migration in Europe. While Francis seems oblivious, even the DCLeaks hackers recognize the treacherous and manipulative Soros as a monstrous global threat. DCLeaks introduces its infamous subject accordingly...

Information, disinformation, truths, half-truths and lies all seem to be jumbled up in the communication strategy of the Holy See. The history of the Church is being written through interviews, improvised discourses, articles on semi-official blogs and media-rumours, leaving the field wide open to all interpretations possible and giving rise to the suspicion that the confusion is deliberate. Two recent examples. The first regards the expulsion of the President of the IOR (the Vatican Bank), Ettore Gotti Tedeschi in 2012. In Benedict XVI’s latest book “Last Conversations” with Peter Seewald, the “Pope Emeritus” takes responsibility himself for Gotti Tedeschi’s dismissal,...

John McCain has been hammering rival Barack Obama for being little more than a vapid "celebrity" and "elitist." But The Nation has obtained a photo revealing just how star-struck a straight-talking maverick can become when offered the chance to celebrate his birthday aboard a yacht filled with celebrities--even if one of those celebrity types turns out to be an A-list con man. The photograph substantiates reports that in late August, 2006, McCain celebrated his 70th birthday aboard a yacht, the Celine Ashley, rented by A-list con man Raffaello Follieri and his then-movie star girlfriend Anne Hathaway. In the current edition...

September 1, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The large sum of money billionaire George Soros put up to influence Pope Francis’ U.S. visit last fall before a presidential election year and to push the American bishops toward support for radical “social justice causes” was not the first time the leftist financier has used his wealth to try and negatively affect the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has continuously withstood and will always survive more formidable opponents than Soros. But this fact is clearly lost on him, given his history of attempting to nefariously impact the Church by funding groups labeled “Catholic”...

Newly released documents from Wikileaks have exposed the efforts of hard-left billionaire George Soros to make Pope Francis quiet down on social issues like abortion and man-woman marriage and make income equality and global warming the centerpiece of his visit last year to the U.S. The documents show how these wealthy groups worked closely with the Pope’s closest advisers including two U.S. Bishops and one Latin American Cardinal. The plan was first advanced at a board meeting of Soros’s Open Society U.S. Programs Board in May, 2015, where the radical group boasts of direct influence with Pope Francis. At that...

Pope Francis encouraged hundreds of thousands of young people at a global gathering of the faithful Sunday to "believe in a new humanity" that is stronger than evil and refuses to see borders as barriers. His appeal came at the end of World Youth Day, a weeklong event being held in southern Poland this year that draws young Catholics from around the world every two to three years for a spiritual pep rally. The youth gathering was Francis' main focus during his pilgrimage to Poland, but over five days in this deeply Catholic nation he also prayed at the former...

<p>Rome — US secret services allegedly eavesdropped on cardinals before the conclave in March to elect a new pope, Italian weekly magazine Panorama claimed Wednesday.</p> <p>"The National Security Agency wiretapped the pope," the magazine said, accusing the United States of listening in to telephone calls to and from the Vatican, including the accommodation housing cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio before he was elected Pope Francis.</p>

First, some historyThe Vatican Library was established in 1475 and is one of the oldest libraries in the world, and also one of the biggest and most safely guarded. Currently, Vatican Library holds about 75000 codices, 85000 incunabula and about 1.1 million books. Apart from all these, there are around 400000 coins and medals, millions of  photographs, prints, drawings. The library stores a large collection starting from the pre-Christian era to the present day collection. Vatican Library  is a huge collection, consisting of many languages from the west to the east, and has added Mathematics, Science, Social Science and other important subjects. What it...

During his recent presentation of the book Beyond the Crisis in the Church: The Pontificate of Benedict XVI, Monsignor Georg Ganswein, who serves as personal secretary to “Pope Emeritus” Benedict XVI, inexplicably and quite mysteriously provided new depth, and thus new impetus, to the novel idea that Benedict’s renunciation of the papacy was qualified by a “changed understanding” of the papacy, according to which Benedict retained a “passive” aspect of the Petrine office while turning over its active exercise to Francis. In the course of the book presentation Ganswein made remarks that surely reflect Benedict’s own understanding of his situation,...

Rome, Italy, Jun 25, 2016 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- What is Benedict XVI's own view of his historical resignation? What has the fall-out been from his secretary Archbishop Georg Gänswein's controversial remark on an “expanded petrine office”? What about the “Prophesy of Malachy,” which allegedly sees Francis as the last pontiff? In a recent and candid conversation, veteran journalist and EWTN Rome correspondent Paul Badde sat down with Archbishop Gänswein, who gave his take on these and a number of other questions. The German archbishop currently serves Pope Francis as Prefect of the Papal Household, and has also maintained...

Backing from retired pope at event to mark his 65th year as a priest may help Francis gain favour among church conservativesBenedict XVI has endorsed Pope Francis’s ministry in an unprecedented Vatican ceremony featuring a reigning pontiff honouring a retired one on the 65th anniversary of his ordination as a priest. The ceremony in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace served in part to show continuity from Benedict to Francis amid continued nostalgia from some conservatives for the former’s tradition-minded papacy. Francis had invited the entire Vatican Curia, or bureaucracy, to celebrate Benedict’s anniversary, and prelates turned out in...

Mainstream media outlets in Great Britain and the US were running news Sunday of a stunning petition that shows 2 million people want a new Brexit vote. Over “two million” signed the referendum in less than 24 hours! The BBC, The Mirror, France 24, The Telegraph, Manchester Evening News, The Guardian… all reported on the bogus petition. But they got punked. The poll was manufactured by 4Chan and Anonymous hackers who loaded up the signatures with fake names from The Vatican, Ghana, North Korea and elsewhere.

If you are knowledgeable about Catholic history, then you may be aware of the hundreds of movements that arose to destroy the Catholic Church over the centuries. Islam wiped out the Catholic Church from North Africa and the Middle East in the first millenium. Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830), a former Catholic Law Professor, who became one of the most bitter enemies of the Catholic Church in history, founded the secret society, the Bavarian Illuminati, with the specific purpose of destroying the Catholic Church. Napoleon Bonaparte, the atheist dictator who waged war on Europe to promote his atheist ideology, sent his troops...

Cardinal Robert Sarah made the comments in an exclusive interview with Famille ChrétienneThe Vatican’s liturgy chief has called on priests to celebrate Mass facing east. In an interview with the French Catholic magazine Famille Chrétienne, Cardinal Robert Sarah said that the Second Vatican Council did not require priests to celebrate Mass facing the people. This way of celebrating Mass, he said, was “a possibility, but not an obligation”. Readers and listeners should face each other during the Liturgy of the Word, he said. “But as soon as we reach the moment when one addresses God – from the Offertory onwards...

How much do you know about the Sistine Chapel? Did you know, for example, that it began as a private chapel for Church elites—the “ultimate ecclesiastical man cave”? The Chapel, which attracts 5 million visitors per year, isn’t just an obligatory stop on an art history tour of Italy, it is a living history of the Church and its influences—influences that range from global, geopolitical change to petty personal feuds. This TED talk, by art historian Elizabeth Lev, outlines the evolution of the Chapel in three stages. The full talk, which Lev delivered in Geneva last December, is well...

The longtime personal secretary to Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI has spoken of a "dramatic struggle" at the conclave of 2005, and insisted that the former Pontiff did not resign because of the "Vatileaks" scandal. Speaking at the launch of a book about Pope Benedict, Archbishop Georg Gänswein-- who continues to act as secretary to the retired Pontiff, while also serving as prefect of the pontifical household-- said that the "Vatileaks" scandal had "little or nothing" to do with the Pontiff's decision to resign. He said that Benedict XVI was motivated by his realization that he was growing weaker. By resigning, Archbishop...

A high-ranking cardinal in the Vatican hierarchy took an unexpected shot Tuesday morning at the White House’s position on transgender use of bathrooms. The White House, however, would not comment. Robert Cardinal Sarah, one of the top lieutenants of Pope Francis, surprised the 1,000-plus guests during his remarks at the annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C. by entering into the “bathroom battle,” a recent and very heated issue in the U.S. “Should not a biological man use a man’s bathroom?” asked Cardinal Sarah, who is prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments...