Free Republic

A popemobile used by Pope Francis is to be transformed into a mobile health unit and sent to the Gaza Strip. Before his death at the age of 88 on Easter Monday, Pope Francis ordered that the vehicle be modified into a clinic on wheels and sent to the war-torn territory to help wounded, sick and malnourished children.

The Vatican City State has toughened sanctions for those who try to illegally enter its territory in areas where free access is not allowed. In a decree issued last month by the Holy See, the monetary sanctions and prison sentences for those who violate the strict security regulations of Vatican City have been considerably increased. The document, signed by Cardinal Fernando Vérguez Alzaga, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, provides for monetary fines ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 euros (about $10,200 to $25,700) and prison sentences ranging from one to four years. These fines will apply especially...

For weeks, we've been hearing news reports and public statements about starving babies in Gaza. 60 Minutes did a long, breathy, segment this past weekend, interviewing clean and showered Gazans supposedly on the edge of death, speaking in perfect English, with no questions asked about whether they danced on Oct. 7. The pope made a lot of furious appeals for Gaza, too, always speaking of the children and throwing a few darts at Israel, which is trying to defend itself from monstrous terrorists, and not the terrorists who have embedded themselves behind the civilians in these misery zones. The UNRWA,...

The Vatican is set to open five sacred portals starting on Christmas Eve for the first time in 25 years. The opening of the Holy Doors marks the beginning of the 2025 Jubilee which is a year of forgiveness, reconciliation and renewed focus on the spiritual life.... At the start of Christmas Eve Mass, Pope Francis will push open the Holy Door in St Peter’s Basilica, which will stay open throughout the year to allow the estimated 32 million pilgrims projected to visit Rome to pass through.... The process of opening the four basilica doors involves removing the brick wall...

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), a left-wing Catholic, responded defiantly to the archbishop for her home city banning her from receiving Holy Communion in the archdiocese because of her support for abortion. Pelosi spoke with the National Catholic Register about a range of issues including San Francisco archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s letter in 2022 prohibiting Pelosi from being given communion, an order she did not take to heart. “I received Communion anyway. That’s his problem, not mine,” Pelosi said. “My Catholic faith is, Christ is my savior. It has nothing to do with the bishops.” Pelosi further described her...

The Vatican has unveiled its 2024 Christmas display—which met with Pope Francis’s approval—and it deliberately advances the leftist/Muslim narrative that Jesus was a “Palestinian.” This is a historical rewrite of the worst kind and gives fuel to the worst people. History is not complicated: The Bible says—and nothing contradicts it—that around the early 17th century B.C., the Israelites settled in the Land of Canaan, which became the Nation of Israel. Around the year 1,000 B.C., King David defeated the Philistines, who were the Israelite’s ancient enemies. For the next slightly more than 400 years, whether as a single nation or...

Pope Francis unveiled the annual nativity scene at the Vatican over the weekend - raising some eyebrows in the process. A noticeable addition this year saw the seminal scene's baby Jesus draped in a keffiyeh - a traditional scarf used by Palestinians as a national symbol. Jesus was born into a Jewish family in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago - and his death triggered the birth of Christianity. A statement from the wheelchair-bound pontiff, moreover, saw him humbly ask onlookers for peace in the Middle East, weeks after he called for an investigation into what he said may be a...

Pope Francis appeared to take a shot at Hungary on Wednesday, insisting “no country can exempt itself” from the obligation to take in migrants. On Tuesday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán rejected a ruling by the European Union’s (EU) Court of Justice that his government had “failed to fulfil its obligations” to relax its immigration laws. “We will maintain the existing regime, even if the European court ordered us to change it,” Orbán said Tuesday in his end-of-year news conference. “The reality is that we have to stop the migrants at the borders,” he declared. “This can be solved by...

ROME — The Vatican suggested Thursday a Biden presidency might inject new life into the stagnant Paris Climate Accord after President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2017. The Vatican COVID-19 Commission announced Thursday that it is organizing a webinar next week in preparation for a December 12 global climate summit to be co-hosted by the United Nations and the UK to mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement. In its preparatory document, the Vatican team lamented the lack of initiative and commitment around the Paris climate goals, something it said needs to gain renewed momentum...

Pope Francis took advantage Sunday of his first public blessing since the coronavirus outbreak to give a shout-out to the “great country” of China. “Let us join spiritually with the Catholic faithful in China, who today celebrate, with particular devotion, the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, help of Christians and Patron of China, revered in the Sheshan shrine in Shanghai,” the pope told pilgrims gathered in Saint Peter’s Square for his Regina Caeli message and apostolic blessing. “I would like to go to Beijing,” Francis said. “I love China.”

Vatican tried to connect climate change with human trafficking by claiming that global warming is responsible for creating “environmental refugees” who flee their homes because of drought or other climate-caused natural disasters

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — His speeches can blend biblical fury with apocalyptic doom. Pope Francis does not just criticize the excesses of global capitalism. He compares them to the “dung of the devil.” He does not simply argue that systemic “greed for money” is a bad thing. He calls it a “subtle dictatorship” that “condemns and enslaves men and women.” Having returned to his native Latin America, Francis has renewed his left-leaning critiques on the inequalities of capitalism, describing it as an underlying cause of global injustice, and a prime cause of climate change. Francis escalated that line last week when...

Vatican officials appear to have been flummoxed after Pope Francis was presented with a communist crucifix depicting Jesus nailed to a hammer and sickle by Bolivia’s president Evo Morales. The gift from the leftwing leader caused an immediate stir among conservative Catholics who said the pontiff was being manipulated for ideological reasons. The response of the pope was less clear. (...)

Pope Francis wraps up the first leg of a three-nation South American pilgrimage Wednesday after issuing an impassioned call for a new economic and ecological world order where the goods of the Earth are shared by everyone, not just exploited by the rich