Free Republic

ROME – Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, unhappy news from the Vatican sometimes has a habit of breaking when the pope is out of town, and thus the media spotlight is momentarily somewhere else.When the Vatican decided to put a couple of former officials from a papally-sponsored pediatric hospital on trial in early September for financial misappropriation, for instance, they started the proceeding on the day Pope Francis left for a much-anticipated trip to Colombia, apparently hoping it would be wrapped up before he got back. (As it turns out, the trial actually dragged on until mid-October.)The same pattern applied this...

Italian police interrogated pro-life leaders today after they ran a campaign yesterday honouring Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, one of the dubia authors, outside the Vatican. The pro-life groups ProVita Onlus, Vita è, and Fede e Cultura drove a publicity truck through the streets of Rome around the Vatican on Monday, bearing billboard-sized images of the dubia cardinal and Pope John Paul II. The police had stopped them for questioning on the Via della Conciliazione, the central road leading to St. Peter’s Basilica. According to main organizer Toni Brandi, head of ProVita Onlus, at one point the police claimed Cardinal Caffarra...

Bishop Hunts “Hidden” Enemies of Pope Francis Bishop Erio Castellucci of Modena, Italy, published in an October issue of his diocesan weekly an edict ordering his priests not to receive in their parishes "seers, charismatics, journalists and intellectuals who manifest a hidden or open dissent towards the official Church and especially to Pope Francis". La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana points out that in October Castellucci had a friendly public discussion with the theologian Andrea Grillo, an intimate enemy of the Catholic faith who habitually used to attack Benedict XVI or John Paul II. One of the first victims of Castellucci was...

Critics of those who have made public their objections to the chaos this pontificate is engendering contend that only “private entreaties” to a wayward Pope are permissible and that any resort to publication is “scandalous.” Nonsense. As canon law recognizes, the faithful “have the right and even at times to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals with reverence toward their pastors…” There is no exception exempting Popes from public criticism. On...