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[Catholic Caucus] Benedict's Last Journey Was in Some Random VanBenedict XVI's mortal remains were transferred under cover of darkness in a van from his residence to St Peter's Basilica.His coffin was followed only by those who had cared for him. NO official representative of the Holy See was present.Roman bishops whispered that they had actually wanted a daylight procession. The remains were carried into St Peter's through a side entrance.AldoMariaValli.it comments that the dead Benedict XVI suffered the same fate as the Roman liturgy. He was admitted to the holy precinct, but without being given the honour he deserved.

George Cardinal Pell is dead. As a man, Cardinal Pell stood accused of grievous sins before several earthly tribunals. He was convicted of some of those crimes in secular courts and as a result, spent over a year in prison—much of it in solitary confinement. He was later acquitted and released when the High Court of Australia unanimously overturned his convictions saying that the jury likely made its decision based on faulty evidence, and that there was a significant possibility that an innocent person had been convicted. Was Cardinal Pell guilty of the crimes he was accused of? Or was...

Catholic church in Austria registers record number of resignationsThe number of faithful leaving the Catholic church in Austria reached a new record of 90,808 in 2022, according to statistics released Wednesday.The number shrank from 4.83 million in the previous year to 4.73 million.A single reason for the number of departures cannot be inferred from the numbers.The number of people leaving the church was already relatively high at 72,222 in 2021 and represented the second-highest figure behind 2010, when 85,960 people turned their backs on the church after abuse cases came to light, according to the daily Der Standard."For many...

Sandra Magister reveals that George Cardinal Pell was "Demos"There are no coincidences. Vox.The last writings of Cardinal Pell. And those diaries of imprisonment so dear to Benedict – Settimo Cielo - Blog - L'Espresso (repubblica.it)A memorandum is circulating among the cardinals about the upcoming conclave. Here it is – Settimo Cielo - Blog - L'Espresso (repubblica.it)THE VATICAN TODAYCommentators at every school, though for different reasons, with the possible exception of Father Spadaro SJ, agree that this pontificate is a disaster in many or more respects, a catastrophe.1. The Successor of St Peter is the rock on which the Church...

The Catholic Church must free itself from this ‘toxic nightmare’Shortly before he died on Tuesday, Cardinal George Pell wrote the following article for The Spectator in which he denounced the Vatican’s plans for its forthcoming ‘Synod on Synodality’ as a ‘toxic nightmare’. The booklet produced by the Synod, to be held in two sessions this year and next year, is ‘one of the most incoherent documents ever sent out from Rome’, says Pell. Not only is it ‘couched in neo-Marxist jargon’, but it is ‘hostile to the apostolic tradition’ and ignores such fundamental Christian tenets as belief in divine judgment,...

Francis Couldn't Behave Properly - Not Even at Benedict's FuneralSilereNonPossum.it (January 5) leaked information on embarrassing moments surrounding Benedict's funeral. Highlights.• Francis' Master of Ceremonies, Father Diego Ravelli, struggled to convince Francis not to leave St Peter's Square before Benedict’s coffin was carried into the basilica.• However, Francis categorically refused to be present at the burial in the grottoes of Saint Peter's.• Originally, Francis wanted the funeral to be “like that of a cardinal, nothing more.”• While Italy, Spain and Britain put their flags at half-mast after Benedict's death, Francis wanted "no mourning" at the Vatican.• Francis pushed the information...

Pope Francis botches the job delivering Pope Benedict's funeral eulogyMost Americans probably missed Pope Benedict's funeral service, given that it was held in the wee hours of the American morning.But writer Rod Dreher, who has interest in Catholic things, was there, and as someone with affection for Pope Benedict XIV, didn't want to miss his funeral. The pomp and ceremony of it was lovely, as was the mass itself. But there was one element that Dreher thought a little substandard -- Pope Francis's presiding over the mass itself, in his reading of the eulogy for his immediate predecessor. He kind...

As we reported, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died on Dec. 31.Normally, for the death of such a world leader, you would have the President in attendance at the funeral. So reporters asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre if Joe Biden would be going. The answer was more than a little embarrassing for the White House.Joe Biden will not attend Pope Benedict XVI’s funeral, per request of the Vatican. pic.twitter.com/Q7VcYEhnei— Kevin McMahon (@Kevin__McMahon) January 3, 2023Jean-Pierre mispronounced “Emeritus,” making it sound like an infection. Someone has to help her with how to pronounce what it is she’s trying to say,...

Pope Emeritus Benedict VXI (sic), who died last Saturday at 95, and the Vatican requested that President Joe Biden not attend Benedict's funeral, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. Benedict made the request prior to his death. The U.S. will send Joe Donnelly, ambassador of the Holy See, "in line with the wishes of the late Pope and the Vatican. This is what their requests were. This is what their wishes were," Jean-Pierre said when asked if Biden would attend the funeral, which is being held Thursday in St. Peter's Square. 'Well why do you think? You tell...

Upon hearing the news of Pope Benedict XVI’s death on Saturday morning, I immediately thought of a long road trip I took with my wife 10 years ago, from Alaska to Texas, and a lonely stretch of highway in central Wyoming where, trapped in a car with nothing else to do, I listened to hours and hours of interviews conducted in the ’90s with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the man destined to become Pope Benedict XVI.I didn’t know it at the time, but those interviews planted seeds that would take years to bear fruit, which they did in 2018 when my...

[Catholic Caucus] Why the First Jesuit Pope Should Be the Last OnePope Francis saves the bacon of yet another corrupt fellow Jesuit. I graduated in 1994 from the Jesuit University of San Francisco (USF), a school drenched in the heresy and scandal that have come to define the modern Jesuit order. I can still remember my first day at the school. It was “condom day,” an absurd campus-wide distribution of condoms that the Jesuit president and Jesuit professors blithely accepted. I had gone to USF not because of the modern Jesuits but in spite of them. In spite of its...

Pope Francis: 'If I look at the Gospel purely sociologically, I'm a communist' In an interview with the Jesuit magazine 'America', Francis rejected polarizations as 'not Catholic'.Rome (kath.net/jg)"If I look at the gospel in a purely sociological way, then yes, then I am a communist, and Jesus is one too." With these words, Pope Francis answered a question about the background to his criticism of capitalism in an interview with the US Jesuit magazine America .The Pope gave an extensive interview to the magazine on November 22. Outgoing editor-in-chief Matt Malone SJ confronted him with criticism from the US. The...

Witches have had a long and elaborate history, even back to ancient Greece. Thanks to Homer and his epic adventure tale the Odyssey, we met Circe, who has often been identified as the first witch in Greek mythology. Circe was one of the most dangerous women a man could come across. She was known for seducing men, luring them to her island, and never letting them go. When men, driven mad by their desire to touch her, visited the island, she caught them off guard and used a spell to transform them into pigs, trapping them forever in their ignominious...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued that stupid people are more dangerous than evil ones. This is because while we can protest against or fight evil people, against stupid ones we are defenseless — reasons fall on dead ears. Bonhoeffer's famous text, which we slightly edited for this video, serves any free society as a warning of what can happen when certain people gain too much power.CHAPTERS0:00 The Darkest Chapter0:55 Letters from prison4:29 About Bonhoeffer5:19 Our Patrons5:28 Subscribe and supportScript based on the work of Dietrich BonhoefferEditor: Jonas KoblinArtist: Pascal GaggelliVoice: Matt AbbottColoring: NalinEditing: Peera LertsukittipongsaProduction: Selina BadorProduction Assistant: BiankaProofreading: SusanBonhoeffer's Theory of...

Pope Francis says Abu Dhabi document ‘came from God’ and you ‘can’t understand it otherwise’'It was something that came from God,' Francis said. 'You can't understand it otherwise, because none of us had this in mind.'“I have been thinking a lot these days – and we talked about it with the Grand Imam – about how the idea of the Abu Dhabi Document came about,” Francis said. The Pope went on to explain how the idea of the Abu Dhabi document was born during a lunch with the Grand Imam where they broke bread and gave it to each other...

A 5-year-old boy claims that he was an African American woman killed in a fire and reincarnated. Little Luke Ruehlman spooked his parents as he began incessantly insisting that he used to be a woman named Pam when he was just 2 years old. The young boy’s mother, Erika, told Ohio’s Fox 2 that her son began speaking of a woman named Pam from a young age, but the family didn’t know anyone by the name. One day Luke finally explained who Pam was. “He turned to me and said, ‘Well, I was,’ ” she recounted. “[He said] ‘Well, I...

German Cardinal Kurt Koch has become the focal point of a frightening new chapter in the German Synodal Way. Last week, the Cardinal criticised the German Synodal Way, by expressing his dismay that some German Catholics were once again forcing the church to submit to the political spirit of the age, as they did during the Nazi era. Many critics of the Synod understood what Koch meant, but Radical Synodalists were outraged and expressed this anger through threats of violence against Koch in sinister emails. Koch was quoted last week as saying: "in addition to the sources of revelation of...

About 3,000 of the approximately 18,000 Protestant pastors in Germany in the 1930s openly supported Adolf Hitler, and about the same number ended up opposing his tyrannical rule. But it was the vast majority of ministers, about 12,000, who chose to remain silent – arguing it wasn't their place to engage in politics – who enabled the Nazis to "crush the heroic 3,000" who stood up against the dictator, points out Eric Metaxas in his new book "Letter to the American Church." "That is the nightmare – that they thought it would be safe," Metaxas said in an interview with...

America has long prided itself on being a country where people can choose whatever religion they like. The majority has long chosen Christianity. By 2070, that may no longer be the case. If current trends continue, Christians could make up less than half of the population — and as little as a third— in 50 years. Meanwhile, the so-called nones — or the religiously unaffiliated — could make up close to half of the population. And the percentage of Americans who identify as Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and other non-Christian faiths could double. Those are among the major findings of...

Members of the Jewish community in Las Vegas, N.M., are trying to purchase Temple Montefiore, the first synagogue in the New Mexico Territory, from the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. The synagogue was sold by the Jewish community in the 1950s as the population of Jews dwindled. With a resurgence of Jews in Las Vegas and the diocese dealing with a bankruptcy, an opportunity emerged for the Jewish community to purchase it back. Jim Weber/The New Mexican Home News Local News Facebook Twitter Email PrintCopy article link Save Nearly 150 years ago, Las Vegas, N.M., was a center of Jewish life...