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God frees, ideas and ideologies do not: they make prisoners. From this axiom, clearly expressed in the Gospel of John and his reference to the doctors of the law, Pope Francis unfolds his homily during this morning mass in Casa Santa Marta before the C9 Cardinals, who until tomorrow will be attending their twenty-fourth meeting. Once again, the Pontiff warns against the risk of “rigidity”, which leads to placing oneself at the center and thus remain untouched before the works of the Holy Spirit and insensitive to new things.   The doctors of the law, in fact, were incapable of...

The Vatican announced today that Pope Francis has appointed members of a pre-synodal council who will collaborate with the secretariat of the Synod of Bishops in preparation for the Pan-Amazonian synod next year. Also announced was the theme of the October 2019 synod: Amazonia: new pathways for the Church and for an integral ecology. Of particular, though not unexpected, interest are the appointments of Cardinal Claudio Hummes and retired Bishop Erwin Kräutler to the council. Both have advocated a change in discipline to allow married clergy in the Latin rite, and the Pan Amazonian synod is expected to provide a...

Saturday, February 03, 2018 Pope Francis, Soros "Illegal Slush Fund," Pope Benedict's Abdication & Financial Blackmail Ganesh Sahathevan is a Fellow at the ACD’s Economic Warfare Institute.  The ACD/EWI team specializes in economic warfare, purposeful interference in civilian infrastructure, including the financial markets, transnational criminal and terrorist organizations. ACD fellow Sahathevan said Pope Francis's closest collaborator has "an illegal slush fund financed by George Soro": "Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, the so-called "Vice Pope" given his close association with Pope Francis, has refused to answer questions concerning his work with a number of NGOs funded by billionaire George Soros.Cardinal Oscar has also refused...

When it was announced last year that Fr. James Martin, SJ, was being brought in as a “consultor” to the Vatican’s communications team, reactions were predictably on a spectrum ranging from deeply perplexed to blood-vessel bursting outrage. Known for his role as editor-at-large for the far-left Catholic rag America Magazine as well as his boundary-pushing views on the Church and homosexuality, Fr. Martin is the kind of name that gets an instant reaction when brought up in any conversation. And among orthodox Catholics, it’s decidedly not a positive one. Fr. Martin became the second high-profile Jesuit to join the Vatican’s propaganda arm,...

ROME – After special study, the German bishops' conference decided to stick with the traditional wording in the Lord's Prayer while the Italian bishops' conference has decided to change the words of the prayer in their translation of the Roman Missal. The decisions come after the French bishops decided that beginning early December last year, French Catholics would change the line, "Lead us not into temptation," to the equivalent of "do not let us enter into temptation." French-speaking Catholics in Benin and Belgium began using the new translation at Pentecost last June. The common Spanish translation already is "no nos...

More on Opinion Subscribe to Opinion Pope Francis, left, embraces Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI before opening the Holy Door to mark the opening of the Catholic Holy Year, or Jubilee, in St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, on Dec. 8, 2015. Photo courtesy of Osservatore Romano/Handout via Reuters (RNS) — Conservative Catholic dissidents, who have been attacking Pope Francis, showed their true colors recently by attacking retired Pope Benedict, calling his writings “subversive” and “modernist.” That’s right, they think Benedict is a heretic.In his new book, “Al Cuore di Ratzinger, Al Cuore del Mondo,” the Italian philosopher Enrico Maria Radaelli...