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The Green Bay Packers announced Monday evening that former safety Willie Wood has died at the age of 83. "The Green Bay Packers Family lost a legend today with the passing of Willie Wood,” said Packers President/CEO Mark Murphy via a press release. “Willie’s success story, rising from an undrafted rookie free agent to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, is an inspiration to generations of football fans. While his health challenges kept him from returning to Lambeau Field in recent years, his alumni weekend visits were cherished by both Willie and our fans. We extend our deepest condolences to...

As the days go by, the controversy ignited by the indictment of former nuncio to the United States Carlo Maria Viganò against Pope Francis on account of the scandal of ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick is becoming ever more lively. And it has seen a further flare-up with the explosion of the case of Kim Davis, the Christian county official in Kentucky who was imprisoned for a week in the summer of 2015 for having refused - for reasons of freedom of conscience and of religion - to grant a marriage license to homosexual couples, and was received by Francis on September...

ROME, September 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has responded to Vatican pushback against his statement on Pope Francis’ meeting with Kim Davis, saying the majority of claims made by Fr. Thomas Rosica and Fr. Federico Lombardi are “in their imagination.” Viganò also said the media now needs to “deal with the real problem: that Francis covered up for McCarrick for five years, allowing him to claim other victims.” On Sunday, Fr. Federico Lombardi and Fr. Thomas Rosica — who handled the Holy See’s press response to Pope Francis’ private meeting with Kim Davis in 2015 — issued a joint...

Pope Francis asked journalists to investigate the charges in the Vigano testimony, and draw their own conclusions. That’s fair enough—although it’s certainly surprising that the Vicar of Christ would not at least deny participating in what would amount to a repudiation of his own professed principles. The Pope’s most aggressive allies, however, have done their best to discourage reporters from following up on the Vigano charges, instead offering a menu of potential distractions: Was Archbishop Vigano allied with the Pope’s conservative critics? Was he a disgruntled former employee? Did he engage in a cover-up himself? Was he at odds with...

Legendary coach Vince Lombardi was famous for his four-minute homilies. He would conclude team meetings with a story or analogy that would illustrate a point that he wanted his players to remember. Some of his remarks have become the centerpiece of motivational quotes used in business ever since. Quality control experts particularly like Lombardi’s, “We will pursue perfection and we will chase it relentlessly. Knowing all the while that we can never achieve it. But in the process, we will find excellence.” One of his sermons was so memorable that many of those teammates can recite it almost word for...

It is quite remarkable to be living at a time when a Cardinal of the Roman Church and the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship is publicly contradicted and humiliated. I do not know Cardinal Sarah personally, but from his writings, I suspect that he is using his humiliation in a spiritually profitable way. But one has to wonder at the absence of any sense of fatherly concern and mercy in the Year of Mercy. It seems that there is no limit to the nonsense that Father Lombardi allows himself to spew forth in defense of the indefensible. We...

When Pope Benedict XVI mused during an aeroplane interview about a male prostitute using a condom to prevent AIDS it was a theoretical proposition suited to a seminary lecture on moral theology and stating it was an error. The story of Paul VI granting permission for nuns in the Congo to use an oral contraceptive because they might become pregnant if raped is exactly that, a story. It was recorded in a book. There is no evidence he allowed it or ordered it and even if he did, it was not then and is not now, magisterial teaching. The above...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis has indicated for the first time that he may make changes to the Vatican's scandal-ridden bank as part of a broad review of the Holy See's troubled administration. Before Francis was elected last month, many of the cardinals who went on to choose him expressed concern about the harm done to the Church's image by three decades of scandals at the bank, which Italian magistrates are now investigating for money laundering. A report last year by Moneyval, a European anti-money laundering body, found that the bank, officially the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR),...

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The global economic crisis is hitting Vatican employees in their cassock pockets. The Vatican said Thursday that Pope Francis, known for his frugal ways, decided Vatican employees won't be getting the bonus that traditionally comes with the election of a new pope. snip Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said that given tough economic times - the Vatican posted a 15 million-euro deficit in 2011 - "it didn't seem possible or appropriate to burden the Vatican's budget with a considerable, unforeseen extra expense."

A victim of a paedophile priest has called for an Italian cardinal who will help elect the next Pope to step down, accusing him of covering up abuse. Francesco Zanardi says he was abused by his local priest, father Nello Giraudo, when he was a young boy and is adamant Catholic Church chiefs knew of the case but failed to act. At a press conference close to the Vatican, Mr Zanardi showed a letter dated 2003 which was written by the then Bishop of Savona in northwest Italy, Domenico Calcagno, who is now one of the 115 elector cardinals. In...

The pope has transferred a top official from the Vatican's secretariat of state to Colombia amid swirling media speculation about the contents of a confidential report into the Vatican's leaks scandal. Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, insisted Friday that the transfer of Monsignor Ettore Balestrero had been months in the works and had nothing to do with the leaks investigation or what the Vatican considers baseless reporting. Balestrero was named undersecretary of the Vatican's Foreign Ministry in 2009 and, among other tasks, has been a lead player in the Holy See's efforts to get on the "white list" of...

Catholic Culture has weighed in on Vatican Radio's editorial endorsing President Obama's "gun control" agenda. Inevitably [the] editorial will be portrayed by careless reporters as an official statement of the Vatican’s position," Catholic World News editor Phil Lawler writes. "It is not; Father Lombardi does not set policy for the Vatican, or make authoritative statements for the Catholic Church." Oh [papal] bull, and "careless" my eye -- how insulting. The buck stops at the top. The captain is responsible for what the crew does under his command. Especially if it involves his senior officers acting in his and its name....

Michael Lombardi is an investment advisor and writes newsletters. He also has put out a long internet presentation (see link) that if you sit through it all, predicts even more and bigger economic turmoil, and in the end, offers five reports to help turn you into a mini-George Soros, investing in ETFs and other means of making money during economic upheaval. If you hang in til the very end, you'll find the pricetag for this is a $195 per year subscription to his newsletter.

By Wright Thompson ESPN.com The house on Sunset Circle looks simple. Four bedrooms. A dining room, a living room, a kitchen, a den. When Lombardi built it, because coaches weren't paid like they are today, it was what he and his wife, Marie, could afford. GREEN BAY, Wis. -- A minor religion has sprung up around the modest brick house at 667 Sunset Circle. It has nothing to do with the family that's lived there for the past four decades, and little to do with the football coach who lived there before them, at least not with the actual man....

"We've got to up our game, we're going to need to go all in, we're going to need to get serious about winning the future," Obama said at Orion Energy Systems, his first stop on his first trip since giving the State of the Union speech Tuesday night. Without directly naming Lombardi, Obama said the legendary Packers coach "said there is no room for second place, there's only one place in my game and that's first place. That's the kind of determination to win that American needs to show right now." Obama, a Chicago Bears fan, caused a bit of...

It is an unlikely piece of modern stagecraft. Contemporary drama strives to be not so much dramatic as to be shocking, not to present the truth but to wallow in clichéd, politically-correct truisms. “Lombardi: A New American Play,” at New York’s Circle in the Square Theater, breaks the mold of permanently adolescent modernity to narrate a tale of mature sensibilities superficially disguised in a story that might conceivably lack any sensibilities whatsoever: a narrative of a long-dead middle-aged football coach in a nondescript Midwestern city a time zone removed from Broadway. The play, however, is aided by the fact that...

PHILADELPHIA — Before winning became the only thing for Vince Lombardi, it remained for a brief period an elusive thing. On Dec. 26, 1960, Lombardi experienced his only playoff defeat with Green Bay as his Packers lost to the Eagles, 17-13, in the N.F.L. championship game. Fifty years later, the teams will meet here Sunday in a wild-card matchup.

Roughly 45 years ago, on Dec. 30, 1962, the Yankee Stadium championship rematch between the Giants and the Green Bay Packers was blacked out on local television sets. Enterprising fans fled to southern New Jersey, searching for the broadcast from Philadelphia, or to the north to receive the signal from Hartford. The 1961 and 1962 N.F.L. championship games, each ending with a Green Bay victory over the Giants, had it all. Born on those afternoons was pro football’s first televised dynasty with Vince Lombardi as king, Paul Hornung as prince and Bart Starr as trusted knight. And although the Giants...

Green Bay, WI - Like a pot of bratwurst left unattended at a Lambeau Field pregame party, simmering tensions in the strife-torn Midwest boiled over once again today as rioting mobs of green-and-gold clad youth and plump farm wives rampaged through Wisconsin Denny’s and IHOPs, burning Texas toast and demanding apologies and extra half-and-half.The spark igniting the latest tailgate hibachi of unrest: a Texas newsletter's publication of caricatures of legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi.Protestors demonstrated against the images throughout the Badger State yesterday, with violent egging and cow-tipping incidents reported in Oconomowac, Pewaukee, Sheboygan, Ozaukee, Antigo, Oshkosh, Waubeno,...

VATICAN CITY, JUL 11, 2006 (VIS) - The Holy Father appointed Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J. as director of the Holy See Press Office. Fr. Lombardi was born in Saluzzo, Italy in 1942 and ordained a priest in 1972. He is currently director general of the Vatican Television Center and of Vatican Radio, posts he will continue to hold in his new office. Benedict XVI accepted the resignation from the office of director of the Holy See Press Office presented by Joaquin Navarro-Valls, thanking him for his long and generous service. Joaquin Navarro-Valls was born in Cartagena, Spain in 1936 and...