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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...

[Catholic Caucus] Ancient Regime Is Back: Church Of Mercy Forbids Requiem For French KingStrasbourg Archbishop Luc Ravel, 64, has forbidden the celebration of the annual Requiem Mass for King Louis XVI (1754-1793) in Strasbourg Cathedral invoking the mischievous Traditiones Custodes, Una Voce France reports.Therefore, this year's Requiem will be celebrated by Father Pierre-Marie Berthe of the Society of St Pius X in their chapel in Strasbourg on January 21.This Requiem for the King has been celebrated since 1993 (!) in the Cathedral.

The Decline of Catholicism in Latin America A recent Wall Street Journal report shines a light on it.Catholicism is rapidly losing ground to Protestants in Latin America, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Seven countries in the region — Uruguay, the Dominican Republic and five in Central America — had a majority of non-Catholics in 2018, according to a survey by Latinobarómetro, a Chilean-based pollster,” it reports. “In a symbolic milestone, Brazil, which has the most Catholics of any country in the world, is expected to become minority-Catholic as soon as this year, according to estimates by academics that track...

Dissident nun says Pope’s support for her ministry shows pro-LGBT ‘new era’ in Catholic ChurchSr. Jeannine Gramick praised Pope Francis' support for her anti-Catholic work, saying he would eventually change the Church's teaching.Thu Jan 13, 2022 - 1:55 pm EST (LifeSiteNews) — A dissident Catholic nun, formerly silenced by the Church for her rejection of Catholic teaching on LGBT issues, has described Pope Francis’ recent letters of support to her as a “very significant” step, signaling a pro-LGBT stance from the Vatican.“There’s a new era in the church because of Pope Francis. He’s enabling people to feel freer,” said Sister...

Pro-vax Catholic media being paid by Soros and GatesThe consortium of Catholic media, catholic-factchecking.com, led by Aleteia and linked to the Holy See, is a project to silence non-aligned Catholic journalists. It is financed by large international anti-life and anti-family lobbies, in cahoots with the big pharmaceutical companies that produce vaccines. This explains a lot....A well-documented investigation by the American website Church Militant reveals how Google, Soros, and Bill Gates finance the Catholic pro-vax media to oppose those in the Church who are not aligned with the pro-vax message. And it turns out that leading the consortium of Catholic media...

Maltese priest warned for posting homophobic remarkArchbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta issued a formal warning against a controversial local priest who posted a homophobic remark on Facebook.In a statement released Jan. 6, the Archdiocese of Malta confirmed that Archbishop Scicluna issued the warning, known as a penal precept, against Father David Muscat, ordering him "to cease making inflammatory and hurtful comments in public forums or face prohibition from exercising his ministry in public.""The archbishop instructed Father David Muscat to delete a Facebook post, in which the priest claimed that being gay was worse than being possessed, and not to use...

Pope Francis writes to controversial nun, thanking her for 50 years of LGBTQ ministryPope Francis has sent an encouraging letter to an American nun thanking her for her 50 years of ministry to LGBTQ Catholics, more than two decades after she was investigated and censured by the Vatican for her work.In his letter dated Dec. 10, Francis wrote that Sister Jeannine Gramick has not been afraid of “closeness” and without condemning anyone had the “tenderness” of a sister and a mother. “Thank you, Sister Jeannine, for all your closeness, compassion and tenderness,” he wrote.He also noted her “suffering ... without...

Francis On Homosexuals: “The Lord Will Save Everyone” (Video)Francis claimed that everyone will be saved during his September 15 in-flight press conference thus qualifying Christ's death as superfluous.The blasphemy went unnoticed until NovusOrdoWatch.org (January 3) paid attention to it. While taking about the vice of homosexuality, Francis said,“Respect everyone. The Lord is good and will save everyone — do not say this aloud [laughs] — but the Lord wants to save everyone. Please do not make the Church deny her truth. Many, many people of homosexual orientation approach the Sacrament of Penance, they approach to ask priests for advice, the...

“What the Fathers and Saints valued and defended, we also feel called to value and defend”: Interview with Dr. Joseph Shaw The following interview first appeared in the pages of the latest issue (no. 15, Winter 2021) of Calx Mariae, a beautiful journal published by Voice of the Family. Rorate Caeli is grateful for VOTF's permission to republish it here for the benefit of our readers, whom I would encourage to subscribe to the print publication. Calx Mariae: Congratulations on your election as President of the Una Voce Federation. For people who don’t know about the Federation how would...

Crusade: Our Response to Traditionis CustodesIn the history of the crusading movement we can observe certain factors which contributed to success or failure, whether in the early crusades of the so-called “Byzantine Empire,” or in the Reconquista, the Eastern Crusades and the Northern Crusades of Western Christendom.[1] One of these factors is rootedness about which I spoke last week.The other critical factor is freedom from earthly attachments. In the various crusading movements, those crusaders which were truly free from worldly attachments succeeded in their war against the enemies of Holy Church. But those that fell into fighting flesh and blood,...

The Trial of the Century Takes the Pope to Court. Which Also Risks an Incident With ChinaAmong the papers in the possession of the Vatican tribunal called to judge Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu and other defendants, with the next hearing scheduled for January 25, there is an explanatory note at the top of which it is written that “during the board meeting of April 6 the Holy Father gave the authorization to make the aforementioned Note public.” Signed: Edgar Peña Parra, substitute secretary of state.This is what Settimo Cielo does in this post: provide readers with the essential features of...

Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life Pushes Child Vaccination Despite Documented Deaths Soon After JabBy Edward PentinThe overall risk of children dying or becoming seriously ill from COVID-19 is extremely low, and yet the president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life is lobbying for child vaccination, recently claiming that it is essential to ending the pandemic and “protects children from any, even if less frequent, serious consequence of COVID-19.”Noting that health authorities in the US and Europe have given the go-ahead for inoculating children aged 5-11, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia told Crux Dec. 17 that even if children show no symptoms,...

Iowa diocese publishes deacon’s pro-LGBT story about gender-confused son ‘Lexi’ The deacon cited his formation in the diaconate as having provided him with some of the principles that led him to accept his son’s lifestyle. Mon Jan 3, 2022 - 1:27 pm ESTMon Jan 3, 2022 - 2:29 pm EST DAVENPORT, Iowa (LifeSiteNews) – A Catholic diocesan newspaper has been promoting transgenderism in the Church. The Catholic Messenger, the newspaper for the Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, displayed the sexual transformation of a St. Petersburg, Florida deacon’s son in the second of a series of articles seeking to illustrate “A Pastoral...

Vatican Demands VaxxApparently the crowds to see Pp. Francis are so small that it doesn't matter any more.The Vatican has eliminated the possibility of employees presenting a negative coronavirus test to gain access to their place of work, insisting that only proof of vaccination or recovery from the coronavirus disease will be admitted.A Vatican decree Thursday signed by Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin states that the obligation of presenting a vaccine passport (Super Green Pass) to go to work applies to all personnel of the Roman Curia and institutions linked to the Holy See as well as external collaborators,...

An Evil Edict from Pope FrancisBISHOP ROB MUTSAERTS Auxiliary Bishop of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands Pope Francis promotes synodality: everyone should be able to talk, everyone should be heard. This was hardly the case with his recently published motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, an ukase [imperial edict] that must put an immediate termination on the traditional Latin Mass. In so doing, Francis puts a big bold line through Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict’s motu proprio that gave ample scope to the old Mass.The fact that Francis here uses the word of power without any consultation indicates that he is losing authority. This was...

Motus in fine velocior (2) - "With a Divisive, Useless, and Unjust Persecution, the Francis Crisis is Gathering Even More Speed" - by Roberto de Mattei by Roberto de MatteiOn February 11, 2014, one year after the day on which Benedict XVI made known his decision to resign from the pontificate, I published an article entitled Motus in fine velocior to signal the beginning of a dizzying acceleration of time’s pace, starting with the resignation of Benedict and the election of Pope Francis on March 13, 2013. Benedict XVI reigned from April 19, 2005, to February 28, 2013, seven...

“The Mask Has Fallen”: Interview with Dr. Kwasniewski in Inside the VaticanThe following interview appears in the January-February 2022 issue of Inside the Vatican magazine (reprinted here with publisher’s permission). The issue also features ITV’s annual “Top Ten People” of 2021, plus former Anglican archbishop and Catholic convert Gavin Ashenden on his embrace of Rome; Darrick Taylor reviewing Julia Meloni’s The St. Gallen Mafia; and Tad Wojcik on the prospects for ethical vaccines. Go to InsideTheVatican.com for information on subscribing.Inside the Vatican: You have edited a substantial new book called From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War. Tell us what...

The Second Atomic Bomb Has Exploded: CDW Issues Directives Banning Traditional Confirmations and Ordinations, Decrees the End of Ecclesia Dei CommunitiesCFN will hold a LIVE Q&A Session on this topic tonight, December 18, at 8:00 PM Eastern Time. Join us with your questions!The predicted document of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW) extending the totalitarian measures against the Traditional Latin Mass has been published. It takes the form of a letter from Archbishop Arthur Roche, the Congregation’s Prefect, and a series of responses to dubia (questions) it says are a consolidation of questions submitted by...

[Catholic Caucus] BREAKING: Vatican orders forced concelebrations, new restrictions on traditional Mass and sacramentsThe document released restricts the traditional celebration of the sacraments, hints at a future withdrawal of permission to celebrate the traditional Mass at all , and issues penalties for priests who will not concelebrate. Hence, in order to pursue the “progress” desired by Traditionis Custodes (TC), the Congregation ordered that it would “not grant permission to use the Rituale Romanum and the Pontificale Romanum which predate the liturgical reform,” since they have “been abrogated” under the terms of TC. Under these conditions, it remains unclear whether the...

Boston's Cardinal O'Malley defends Francis against attacks from EWTN critics ROME — Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley on Dec. 17 defended Pope Francis against criticisms from the U.S.-based Eternal Word Television Network, known as EWTN, saying the Catholic media empire's attacks on Francis are not representative of how most Catholics view the pope. "The Holy Father himself has commented on the situation of the EWTN television (large American Catholic network), where many times the commentators are very critical of the Holy Father, at least of his ideas," said O'Malley in an interview with Argentine daily newspaper La Nación.O'Malley's remarks come after...