Showing posts with label Pope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pope. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Conservative Pundits Love Pope Francis" Progressive Rhetoric
There’s no question that Pope Francis has Catholics and non-Catholics alike sitting up and taking notice. Posting popularity numbers that most politicians would sell their firstborn child for, Pope Francis is enjoying a Catholic revitalization that is more in words than actual deeds:
Despite the immense popularity the aged Argentine has won since his election last year, not a jot of doctrine has changed, nor has the Catholic Church swelled with American converts.
But there’s more than one way to measure a pontiff’s influence on his far-flung flock. Start asking around — here in Boston and beyond, Catholics and atheists alike — and it’s easy to find people eager to share how one man, in just one year, has changed their lives.
There’s the gay man who finally feels welcome in his church. The woman who weeps when headlines deliver good news at last. The former priest who no longer clenches his fist during Mass. The Latinos who waited forever for a Pope who speaks their language.
“I’m telling you, brother, if you focus on the numbers, you’re missing the story,” says the Rev. John Unni, a Boston pastor
I suspect that conservative pundits Ana Navarro and Peggy Noonan are missing the story as well, as they gush over Pope Francis on This Week.
Conservative Pundits Love Pope Francis" Progressive Rhetoric
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Pope pressured to act on abuse after UN rebuke
Pope Francis waves as he leaves at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014. A U.N. human rights committee denounced the Vatican on Wednesday for “systematically†adopting policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades, and urged it to open its files on the pedophiles and the bishops who concealed their crimes. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Francis waves as he leaves at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014. A U.N. human rights committee denounced the Vatican on Wednesday for “systematically†adopting policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades, and urged it to open its files on the pedophiles and the bishops who concealed their crimes. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Francis listens to his speech being translated in several languages, during his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014. A U.N. human rights committee denounced the Vatican on Wednesday for “systematically†adopting policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades, and urged it to open its files on the pedophiles and the bishops who concealed their crimes. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Kirsten Sandberg, chairperson of the U.N. human rights committee on the rights of the child, talks during a press conference at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014. A U.N. human rights committee denounced the Vatican on Wednesday for adopting policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades, and urged it to open its files on the pedophiles and the churchmen who concealed their crimes. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
In this photo provided by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Pope Francis is greeted by Italian Defense minister Mario Mauro, center, and Italian Chief of Staff General Claudio Graziano, at the end of a weekly general audience he held in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014. (AP Photo/L’Osservatore Romano, ho)
Kirsten Sandberg, center, chairperson of the U.N. human rights committee on the rights of the child, talks to committee members Maria Herczog, right, and Benyam Mezmur during a press conference at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014. A U.N. human rights committee denounced the Vatican on Wednesday for adopting policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades, and urged it to open its files on the pedophiles and the churchmen who concealed their crimes. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
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VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis came under new pressure Wednesday to punish bishops who covered up for pedophile priests when a U.N. human rights panel accused the Vatican of systematically protecting its reputation instead of looking out for the safety of children.
In a scathing report that thrilled victims and stunned the Vatican, the United Nations committee said the Holy See maintained a “code of silence” that enabled priests to sexually abuse tens of thousands of children worldwide over decades with impunity.
Among other things, the panel called on the Vatican to immediately remove all priests known or suspected to be child molesters, open its archives on abusers and the bishops who covered up for them, and turn the abuse cases over to law enforcement authorities for investigation and prosecution.
The committee largely brushed aside the Vatican’s claims that it has already instituted new safeguards, and it accused the Roman Catholic Church of still harboring criminals.
“The committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by, and the impunity of, the perpetrators,” the panel said.
The stinging language surprised the Vatican and put it in damage-control mode, with officials strongly defending the church and accusing the committee of allowing itself to be swayed by pro-gay ideologues. The Vatican, which defended itself at a U.N. committee hearing last month, said the panel ignored the measures the Holy See has already taken to protect children.
“I’m tempted to say that the text was probably written ahead of time,” said the Vatican’s U.N. ambassador, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi.
Nevertheless, the report puts pressure on Francis to take decisive action after a year in which he has largely let the abuse portfolio fall by the wayside as he tackled other pressing issues, such as reforming the Vatican bureaucracy.
The Vatican announced in December that the new pope would create a commission to study how to prevent abuse and help victims, but no firm details about its makeup or scope have been released since.
And critically, the Vatican has yet to sanction any bishop for having covered up for an abusive priest, even though more than a decade has passed since the scandal exploded in the U.S. and countless law enforcement investigations around the world made it clear the role bishops played.
Vatican officials have suggested that under Francis, this might soon change.
The report was issued by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, an 18-member panel that includes academics, sociologists and child development specialists from around the globe.
Its job is to monitor compliance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty the Vatican ratified in 1990. The treaty calls for signatories to protect children from harm. Only three countries have failed to ratify it: the U.S., Somalia and South Sudan.
Last month, the Vatican was subjected to a blistering daylong grilling by the U.N. committee, which then produced its final observations on Wednesday.
“The committee expresses serious concern that in dealing with child victims of different forms of abuse, the Holy See has systematically placed preservation of the reputation of the church and the alleged offender over the protection of child victims,” the report concluded.
At a news conference in Geneva, committee chairwoman Kirsten Sandberg ticked off some of the core findings: that bishops moved pedophile priests from parish to parish rather than reporting them to police, that known abusers are still in contact with children, and that the Vatican has never required bishops to report abusers to police.
“This report gives hope to the hundreds of thousands of deeply wounded and still suffering clergy sex abuse victims across the world,” said Barbara Blaine, president of the main U.S. victims group, SNAP.
“Now it’s up to secular officials to follow the U.N.’s lead and step in to safeguard the vulnerable because Catholic officials are either incapable or unwilling to do so.”
Critically, the committee rejected the Vatican’s longstanding argument that it doesn’t control bishops or their abusive priests.
The panel essentially held the Vatican responsible for every priest, parish and Catholic school in the world, calling on it to pay compensation to all victims of sexual abuse worldwide, and also to those who labored in Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries, the church-run workhouses where young women were subject to slave labor and often had their out-of-wedlock babies taken from them.
While the Vatican itself didn’t raise an objection to that aspect of the report, other church advocates did.
“I think that the U.N. report describes a monolithic church that does not exist in fact,” said Nicholas Cafardi, a U.S. canon lawyer and former chairman of the U.S. bishops’ lay review board that monitored clerical abuse. “The pope in Rome cannot control and is certainly not responsible for what happens throughout the Catholic world.”
The committee disagreed.
Benyam Mezmur, a committee member and Ethiopian academic on children’s legal rights, cited among other things a letter from a Vatican cardinal advising Irish bishops to refrain from any policy requiring they report pedophiles to police.
“They keep saying they don’t have the authority, but in the meantime we have had instances of the Holy See trying to influence bishops,” he said in an interview. “You cannot have it both ways. Either you have influence or you don’t.”
The committee’s recommendations are non-binding and there is no enforcement mechanism. But it asked the Vatican to comply and report back by 2017.
The recommendations extended far beyond child sexual abuse in ways that conflict with church teachings.
For example, the committee urged the Vatican to amend canon law to allow abortions on children in some circumstances, such as to protect the life of the young mother. It asked the Holy See to ensure that sex education, including access to information about contraception, is mandatory in Catholic schools. And it called on the Vatican to condemn discrimination against homosexual children or youngsters raised by gay couples.
Tomasi accused the committee of adopting a pro-gay “ideological line.”
___
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Pope pressured to act on abuse after UN rebuke
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Obama to meet with Pope Francis in March
FILE – This Dec. 8, 2013 file photo shows Pope Francis as he arrives at the Spanish Steps to pray at the statue of the Virgin Mary, in central Rome on the occasion of the Immaculate Conception feast. President Barack Obama will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican as part of a European trip scheduled for March. The White House says Obama “looks forward to discussing with Pope Francis their shared commitment to fighting poverty and growing inequality†during their March 27 meeting. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, File)
FILE – This Dec. 8, 2013 file photo shows Pope Francis as he arrives at the Spanish Steps to pray at the statue of the Virgin Mary, in central Rome on the occasion of the Immaculate Conception feast. President Barack Obama will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican as part of a European trip scheduled for March. The White House says Obama “looks forward to discussing with Pope Francis their shared commitment to fighting poverty and growing inequality†during their March 27 meeting. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, File)
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican as part of a European trip scheduled for March.
The White House says Obama “looks forward to discussing with Pope Francis their shared commitment to fighting poverty and growing inequality” during their March 27 meeting. Obama also plans to meet in Rome with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and Prime Minister Enrico Letta.
Obama’s trip begins March 24-25 in The Hague, Netherlands, where he will participate in a nuclear security summit hosted by the Dutch government and meet with Dutch leaders.
On March 26, Obama will travel to Brussels for an U.S.-European Union summit with the presidents of the European Council and the European Commission, as well as meetings with Belgian leaders and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
Obama to meet with Pope Francis in March
Friday, January 17, 2014
Pope Francis Is a "Political Genius"
(Newser) – He’s known for his humility, his down-to-earth nature, his personal phone calls to the flock, and even his selfies. But is Pope Francis actually a “political genius”? Yes, writes Candida Moss at Politico Magazine. “Herein lies the genius of Pope Francis’s papacy: He has persuaded the world he isn’t a politician and, in doing so, has become arguably the most politically influential man in the world.” The thing is, predecessor Benedict said many of the things Francis is saying. But with Francis, because of how he leads his life, more people listen.
President Obama would do well to pay attention to this pope, writes Moss. “What other world leader has such clarity of message?” Maybe Obama can’t literally get as close to the public as Francis can, but he can take a larger lesson: Francis “shows that even in the informational deluge of the modern age, it’s possible to hold to and embody a few big ideas and persuade people to rally around them,” writes Moss. “What American president couldn’t benefit from a reminder of that?” Click for the full piece.
Pope Francis Is a "Political Genius"
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
From RealClearPolitics: Obamacare Enrollees; Fox News and The White House; Pope Discusses Abortion;
Good morning. It’s Tuesday, January 14, 2014. Congress came back in session with a bang, as a group of bipartisan, bicameral congressional negotiators produced a 1,582-page budget blueprint last night that is expected to pass both the House and the Senate.
The $ 1.1 trillion spending bill restores some cuts to social programs such as Head Start, gives federal workers a paltry 1 percent raise, and keeps the government running through the end of Major League Baseball’s regular season. (And they wouldn’t shut the government during the World Series, would they?)
Speaking of which, the National League team in Barack Obama’s adopted hometown of Chicago has unveiled a new Cubs mascot to scathing reviews. The White House has not yet commented. Meanwhile, the president’s schedule includes lunch with Joe Biden, hosting the 2013 NBA champion Miami Heat in the East Room and meeting early this evening with Maria Shriver to discuss her report on the status of women in America.
As far as tomorrow goes, the president is heading to North Carolina. In his absence RCP is hosting a noon event at the Newseum focusing on America’s energy future with Sen. Joe Manchin as the keynoter. (If you wish to attend, clickhere to RSVP.)
Today’s date is a signature day in the history of television. Sixty-two years ago today, the incomparable Dave Garroway opened a live broadcast from New York City with the words “Well, here we are.”
Sporting a huge lavalier microphone around his neck, he got up from behind his desk and walked around the studio and said, “Good morning to you–the very first good morning of what I hope and suspect will be a great many good mornings between you and I. Here it is—January 14, 1952, when NBC begins a new program called ‘Today.’ And if it doesn’t sound too revolutionary, I really believe this begins a new kind of television.”
And so it did. I’ll have more on the Today Show and Dave Garroway’s influence on the medium in a moment. First, I’d point you to our front page, where we aggregate an array of stories and columns spanning the political spectrum. We also offer a full complement of original material from RCP’s own reporters and contributors, including:
* * *
Top 10 Lawmakers on Energy. As part of RCP’s weeklong focus on the issue, Caitlin Huey-Burns and Tim Hains collaborated on this slide show.
Just 24 Percent of ACA Enrollees Are Under 35. Alexis Simendinger reports on the data, released yesterday, which show a sign-up trend skewing older than hoped for.
A Second Look at Medicaid Enrollment Numbers. Sean Trende revisits the figures he explored last week, only this time using more precise — and revealing — data supplied by one state.
Christie Faces Tall Task in Reasserting Agenda. Amid fallout from last week’s “Bridgegate” revelations, the New Jersey governor will try to change the subject with his state-of-the-state address today. Scott Conroy has a preview.
Brett Baier on Fox News’ Relationship With the White House. Check out the latest installment of “RCP’s Morning Commute.”
Poll: 23 Percent Say U.S. Headed in Right Direction. Adam O’Neal has thenumbers.
Pope Ratchets Up Rhetoric on Abortion. Adam reports on the pontiff’s surprisingly strong words on the subject Monday in his State of the World address.
N.Y. Congressman to Wed Same-Sex Partner. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York is engaged to be married. Adam has the details.
Human Rights Buried Under $ 51 Billion Sochi Games. Mark Cunningham wonderswhether the international community will turn a blind eye next month to Russia’s oppression.
* * *
With his bow tie, horn-rimmed glasses, and everyman looks, Dave Garroway was perhaps an unlikely television star. His secret was his amiable manner and preternatural calmness—on live television, no less, amid a clattering newsroom—and his love of the subject material, whatever that happened to be.
TV critic Tom Shales has ruminated that the early television performers and producers were creators in the truest sense of the word. “Inventing TV—the machine—was not that hard,” he wrote. “Dave Garroway helped invent what you put on it once you’ve got it.”
When Garroway died by his own hand in 1982, Shales penned a poignant obituary. “Dave Garroway was very important to television,” he wrote. “If this were theater we were talking about, his death would be like all the Barrymores dying at once; everyone who’s come after him has owed him something.”
At the NBC studios in New York, they know this. Two years ago, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of “Today,” they paid him due homage.
“Dave Garroway was a master communicator,” said Al Roker. “He could talk to people. He, in a sense, was a showman. You know, the ‘window’ was his ring.”
“I grew up with Dave Garroway; it was a revelation,” added Tom Brokaw. “I lived in such a remote part of the country that we didn’t get television until 1955, and for that to come into our living room—I was going off to school, my mother to work—and we would sit and watch Dave Garroway, who was a maestro at what he was able to do.”
This was a maestro whose cast in the early years included a pet chimpanzee who frequently bit Garroway and was eventually eased off the show. At first, television writers didn’t know what to make of the mishmash of news and entertainment, but the show made money for the network, and Garroway’s relaxed work won over the critics.
“He does not crash into the home with the false jollity and thunderous witticisms of a backslapper,” New York Times critic Richard F. Shepard wrote in 1960. “He is pleasant, serious, scholarly looking and not obtrusively convivial.”
Garroway’s trademark was signing off by saying, “Peace,” while extending the palm of his hand. After this term became devalued by overuse in the political tumult of the times, he switched to “Courage,” something adopted years later by CBS anchorman Dan Rather.
In those early days of live television, Dave Garroway’s official title wasn’t “anchorman” or “host.” It was “communicator,” and it couldn’t have been more apt.
‘”He could look at the camera,” said Barbara Walters, who was hired by Garroway, “and make you feel he was talking only with you.”
Carl M. Cannon
Washington Bureau Chief
RealClearPolitics
Twitter: @CarlCannon
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From RealClearPolitics: Obamacare Enrollees; Fox News and The White House; Pope Discusses Abortion;
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Rich Catholics Threaten Pope Francis — Because He Frightens Them
If anyone wonders whether Pope Francis has irritated wealthy conservatives with his courage and idealism, the latest outburst from Kenneth Langone left little doubt. Sounding both aggressive and whiny, the billionaire investor warned that he and his overprivileged friends might withhold their millions from church and charity unless the pontiff stops preaching against the excesses and cruelty of unleashed capitalism.
According to Langone, such criticism from the Holy See could ultimately hurt the sensitive feelings of the rich so badly that they become “incapable of feeling compassion for the poor.” He also said rich donors are already losing their enthusiasm for the restoration of St. Patrick"s Cathedral in Manhattan — a very specific threat that he mentioned directly to Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.
Langone is not only a leading fundraiser for church projects but a generous donor to hospitals, universities and cancer charities (often for programs and buildings named after him, in the style of today"s self-promoting philanthropists). Among the super-rich, he has many friends and associates who may share his excitable temperament.
While his ultimatum seems senseless — would a person of true faith stiff the church and the poor? — it may well be sincere. And Langone spends freely to promote his political and economic views, in the company of the Koch brothers and other Republican plutocrats.
Still, a pope brave enough to face down the mafia over his financial reform of the murky Vatican Bank shouldn"t be much fazed by the likes of Langone.
Yet Langone has reason to worry that the Holy Father is in fact asking hard questions about people like him. Indeed, he could serve as a living symbol of the gross and growing economic inequality that disfigures the American system and threatens democracy.
As a leader of the New York Stock Exchange, he was largely responsible for the scandalous overpayment of his friend Richard Grasso, the exchange president who received nearly $ 190 million in deferred compensation when he stepped down. Although New York"s highest court eventually upheld Grasso"s pay package, it was a perfect example of the unaccountable, self-serving greed of Wall Street"s elite.
Anything but repentant following the revelation and repudiation of the Grasso deal by NYSE executives, Langone told Forbes magazine in 2004: “They got the wrong f—ing guy. I"m nuts, I"m rich, and, boy, do I love a fight. I"m going to make them s— in their pants. When I get through with these f—ing captains of industry, they"re going to wish they were in a Cuisinart — at high speed.”
He embarked on a furious vendetta against Eliot Spitzer, who had fought to recapture Grasso"s millions as New York attorney general. And when Spitzer was forced to resign as governor in the wake of a prostitution scandal, Langone"s public gloating seemed to indicate that he had played a personal role in exposing his enemy"s indiscretions. He particularly hated Spitzer for attempting to punish and curtail the worst misconduct in the financial industry.
While Langone passionately defended the outlandish grasping of the super-rich like his friend Grasso, however, he has displayed far less indulgence toward workers, especially those struggling to support their families on poverty wages. Until just last year, he was a director of Yum! Brands, the global fast food conglomerate that includes Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken among its holdings — and that spends millions annually to hold down the minimum wage and prevent unionization of its ill-paid employees and farmworkers.
What all this adds up to is hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable compensation for financial cronies, but not a dime more for low-income workers. It is exactly the kind of skewed outcome Francis means when he speaks about today"s capitalists, “the powerful feeding upon the powerless,” and the need for renewed state regulation to bring their burgeoning tyranny under control. He is talking about Langone, the Kochs and an entire gang of right-wing financiers.
“How I would love a church that is poor and for the poor,” Francis said not long after his election to the papacy. This could be what he gets — and that might not be so bad, for the poor and for all of us, Catholic or not, who love justice.
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Rich Catholics Threaten Pope Francis — Because He Frightens Them
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Who Is Pope Francis? Part 7
From TPM Reader MOG …
I can only speculate about how Pope Francis is acting and the reaction to it. I offer these comments from the perspective of someone who just turned 64, grew up in the Chicago suburbs, attended parochial grade school and high school (non Jesuit) but isn’t much of a practicing Catholic these days. However, I still believe myself Catholic, especially in outlook and mindset. My freshman year of high school (1963) was the first time the Chicago Diocese began implementing the revised religion curriculum which was an outgrowth of Vatican II.
It was so new in fact that our textbook was still the old one so we only partially used it. I can attest that at least in my experience, Pope John XXIII and Vatican II had a profound impact on many of the young priests at our school. My freshman religion teacher hadn’t yet even been ordained but was the following year. Because of the openness advocated in Vatican II, students had many more heartfelt talks with priests than in the prior years and many of those young priests opened up to us about their feelings and even some doubts. Even though I’m not much engaged in the church these days, I have fond memories of those times. I had heard that several of the young priests from that time left the priesthood eventually.
I bring this up because Pope Francis was a young priest during that time. From his current behavior I would say the Pope John XXIII had a big impact on him. Following Pope Pious XII, who would never be described as warm, Pope John XXIII was a breath of fresh air. He wanted the laity involved which for an altar boy meant having to really remember your Latin as the people were expected to say it along with you and that meant you could no longer quickly mumble it. To Pope John XXIII, all people were important not just Catholics. He believed the Pope should embody Christ in word and action, not just head a bureaucracy and set down a bunch of rules. It appears to me that Pope Francis is following that same philosophy. Whether this translates into changes to actual church dogma is another story but I would say that, as we have already seen, strict adherence to the rules is not the emphasis. Pope Francis is more concerned with the person. If Jesus was willing to forgive who is the Pope to not follow in Jesus’ footsteps.
In grade school, religion classes were all about learning the Baltimore Catechism. Each class we would be given a rule and then spend the rest of the class, or so it seemed, thinking up exceptions. I’m always surprised more Catholics aren’t lawyers. Anyway, the Catholic Church is still a big institution and bureaucracy. Like a big ship it turns slowly. Frankly, Pope Francis’ impact will be seen in how long he lives. Pope John XXIII papacy was fairly short and he didn’t appoint many cardinals. Although Pope Francis is 77, with modern medicine his papacy may last a long time and he may have a lasting impact on the church. As someone who thinks none of the subsequent popes have measured up to Pope John XXIII, Pope Francis is the first to make me believe that he will.
Who Is Pope Francis? Part 7
Pope wishes for "better world"
Pope Francis presented a message of peace and humility during the Christmas Eve midnight mass in Vatican City. NBC’s Martin Fletcher reports.
By Alexander Smith, NBC News contributor
Pope Francis called on the world to end the “hatred and vengance” in Syria and to “heal the wounds of the beloved country of Iraq” in his first Christmas Day speech to an estimated crowd of 150,000 at the Vatican on Wednesday.
In an address dominated by calls to end international conflicts, the pope urged “a favorable outcome in peace talks between Israel and Palestine.”
He also highlighted the conflicts in South Sudan and the Central African Republic, which he said had been “torn apart by a spiral of violence and poverty.”
Filippo Monteforte / AFP – Getty Images
Pope Francis delivers his traditional Christmas “Urbi et Orbi” blessing from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday.
The message of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was directed at “every man or woman who keeps watch through the night, who hopes for a better world, who cares for others while humbly seeking to do his or her duty,” he said.
His words were met with chants of support from the large crowd in St. Peter’s Square, where flags from all over the world were waved.
“Prince of Peace, in every place turn hearts aside from violence and inspire them to lay down arms and undertake the path of dialogue,” he told the crowd, in Italian.
The pope spoke of violence in Nigeria — “rent by constant attacks which do not spare the innocent and defenseless” — and of refugees in the Horn of Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. “May tragedies like those we have witnessed this year, with so many deaths at Lampedusa, never occur again.”
He added: “Child of Bethlehem…look upon the many children who are kidnapped, wounded and killed in armed conflicts, and all those who are robbed of their childhood and forced to become soldiers.”
He asked for protection for victims of natural disasters, including those affected by Typhoon Haiyan, which smashed into the Philippines in November, killing more than 6,000 people and displacing millions.
Related: Then and now photos show differences in Benedict’s, Francis’ styles
On Tuesday, Pope Francis celebrated Christmas Eve Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, where he quoted from Isaiah: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”
Queen Elizabeth II’s annual Christmas message says it’s important to strike a balance between action and reflection.
Elsewhere on Christmas Day, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the Royal Family arrived at St Mary Magdalene church, in Sandringham, where they attended an annual Christmas service, the BBC reported.
Later on Wednesday, the Queen’s traditional Christmas message focused on the need to to pause for reflection.
“We all need to get the balance right between action and reflection,” she said in the message, which was prerecorded earlier in December at Buckingham Palace.
“With so many distractions, it is easy to forget to pause and take stock.”
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted: “I wish everyone in Britain and around the world a very happy and peaceful Christmas,” and posted a link to him reading the poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”
President Barack Obama used his Christmas message to call on Americans to embrace the season in service and “to love our neighbors as we would ourselves; to feed the hungry and look after the sick; to be our brother’s keeper and our sister’s keeper.”
In this week’s address, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama wished everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
In the Mideast, pilgrims celebrated Christmas in the ancient Bethlehem church where tradition holds Jesus was born, as candles illuminated the sacred site and the joyous sound of prayer filled its overflowing halls.
This year’s turnout was the largest in years in Bethlehem, and the celebrations have been marked by careful optimism amid ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Leaders expressed hope the coming year would finally bring the Palestinians an independent state of their own.
The top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land, Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal, led a prayer for some 1,000 worshippers. “The whole world now is looking at Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus,” Twal said in his annual address.
“The message of Christmas is a message of peace, love and brotherhood. We have to be brothers with each other,” he said.
Among the crowds was New Yorker Will Green, who traveled to the town with his wife Debbie and 2-year-old daughter Daphne.
“All the stories that we grew up with, it’s here,” he told The AP. “It’s part of our life. We heard them in the family, school and church. This is the birthplace.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
David Ramos / Getty Images
A competitor in Christmas fancy dress jumps into the sea during the 104rd Barcelona Traditional Christmas Swimming Cup at the Old Harbour of Barcelona on December 25, 2013 in Barcelona, Spain.
Related:
- Pope Francis delivers first Christmas Eve homily: ‘Do not be afraid!’
- ‘Who am I to judge?’: The pope’s most powerful phrase in 2013
- Pope Francis draws crowds 4 times larger than Benedict
This story was originally published on Wed Dec 25, 2013 6:38 AM EST
Pope wishes for "better world"
Pope, Off Script, Nods to Atheists In Holiday Call For World Peace
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Pope, Off Script, Nods to Atheists In Holiday Call For World Peace
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Pope Francis continues to preach reform at first Christmas mass
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Pope Francis continues to preach reform at first Christmas mass
Friday, December 13, 2013
Latest Version of Newsweek Channels Leftists Comparing Pope Francis to Che Guevara
The latest version of Newsweek sounds like it’s going to be even more liberal than the The Daily Beast version. The group hoping to re-launch the print edition has an article on their website called “Is Pope Francis a Socialist?”
Their answer is no, but they’re so impressed with the new pope that they’re channeling the idea that somehow pope photos will replace Che Guevara as a revolutionary icon:
The left-leaning Guardian, which routinely heaped opprobrium on the Vatican for its mishandling of the pedophile priests scandal, hails Francis as the liberals’ new poster boy. Literally: Tomorrow’s undergraduates, predicts Jonathan Freedland, will adorn their rooms with posters of Francis instead of Che Guevara. And Time just named him their Person of the Year.
For many conservative Americans, who believe socialism begins with street lighting, the question of whether the pope is a socialist is not moot. Before they join in the songs of praise for the pope they need to know which side the pope is on.
Of course, the notion that Pope Francis is a true socialist is absurd. Socialists believe in the state taking control of the commanding heights of the economy. They believe the free market should be substituted by a command economy in which goods are produced according to need and prices are fixed to ensure fairness.
Nothing Pope Francis has said or done would suggest for a moment that he is a dangerous radical or even that he secretly harbors socialist thoughts.
Then there’s a passage that really suggests there’s a violent dictatorship running Vatican City:
Story Continues Below Ad ↓
Because they operate behind the scenes, Vatican bureaucrats can all too easily get away with secrecy – and crimes. Scandals involving clerics’ visits to gay brothels and money laundering by the Vatican Bank have sealed the curia’s reputation as Da Vinci Code baddies.
“They have a lot at stake in things continuing as they are,” claims one Vatican watcher, referring to conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978 after only 33 days. “They will see off anyone, even a pope, if they suspect opposition.”
If Pope Francis gets bumped off by wicked cardinals, you heard it first in the new Newsweek.
Latest Version of Newsweek Channels Leftists Comparing Pope Francis to Che Guevara
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Why Pope Francis Is Time"s Person of the Year
(Newser) – 2013 has been a pretty unbelievable year for Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis, dominated Facebook, and now finds himself Time’s Person of the Year. Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs explains how he ended up on the cover after just nine months on the job: because of how he has positioned himself (“at the very center of the central conversations of our time,” from wealth to the role of women to justice), for his reach in our flattening world (“far beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church”), and for what he has accomplished in such a short time. “Something remarkable: he has not changed the words, but he’s changed the music.”
Gibbs acknowledges the skeptics’ likely response—that Francis faces many obstacles “in accomplishing much of anything beyond making casual believers feel better about the softer tone coming out of Rome while feeling free to ignore the harder substance.” But the fascination that swirls around him gives him an ability Benedict XVI lacked: “to magnify the message of the church and its power to do great good.” Writes Gibbs, “The heart is a strong muscle; he’s proposing a rigorous exercise plan. And in a very short time, a vast, global, ecumenical audience has shown a hunger to follow him. For pulling the papacy out of the palace and into the streets, for committing the world’s largest faith to confronting its deepest needs, and for balancing judgment with mercy, Pope Francis is Time’s 2013 Person of the Year” (cover story here). Also, the runners-up: Edward Snowden, Edith Windsor, Bashar al-Assad, and Ted Cruz. See past winners here.
Why Pope Francis Is Time"s Person of the Year
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Will the Pope insist on seeing Gaza this time?
Will the Pope insist on seeing Gaza this time?
http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/pope-francis.jpg
Pope Francis
After the humiliation of the last papal visit,
Will the Pope insist on seeing Gaza this time?
Or should he, too, boycott Israel until Jerusalem and the Christian and Muslim communities are freed from occupation?
CNN reports on Israeli PM Netanyahu’s reception at the Vatican and plans for the Pope to visit Israel in May.
Recalling the shabby treatment of religious leaders on previous visits to the Holy Land, let us hope Pope Francis takes a firmer line than his predecessor and insists on seeing Gaza and ministering to his terrorized flock there.
Pope Benedict
In May 2009, when Benedict was Pope, the Vatican told the Israeli press that the Holy Father would refrain from visiting Gaza. The word ‘refrain’ was a peculiar one in the circumstances. “The Pope will refrain from visiting Gaza….” smacks of abstinence, as in refraining from sexual intercourse. Setting foot in Gaza was as sinful as sneaking into a brothel, it seems. Israel’s hoodlums of course were keen to prevent him seeing how the tiny, overcrowded enclave had been devastated 16 months earlier by their murderous blitzkrieg codenamed Cast Lead. And the Pope went along with it.
Gaza’s isolated and besieged Catholic community were none too happy with the Pope’s attitude, judging by the reaction of their redoubtable old priest Fr Manuel Mussallam. “We will ask him why he came, what he intends saying to the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims and why he isn’t coming to Gaza,” said Fr Manuel. “We’ll tell him that this is not the right moment to come and visit the holy places, while Jerusalem is occupied.”
Time for the Pope to join BDS?
Having decided to go to Palestine (via Israel) it was imperative for the Pope to include Gaza or it would look like he didn’t give a damn about the appalling persecution in the very land where Christianity was born. He might as well hammer one more nail into Christendom’s coffin. Then again, should he be going to Israel at all while Jerusalem, Bethlehem and many other places dear to Christian and Muslim religious belief are under the jackboot?
Indeed, has it finally come to the point where the Pope ought to do the decent thing and boycott Israel… join the BDS movement? Admittedly, it’s a tough call given the Catholic Church’s considerable interests out there.
Archbishop Rowan Williams and British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks at Birkenau
But we have seen enough wimpish conduct by Christian leaders while Israel defiles the Holy Land. The previous November, while the regime was planning its vicious assault, codename Operation Cast Lead, on Gaza’s Muslims and Christians after softening them up with two years of blockade and starvation, we were treated to the spectacle of the Archbishop of Canterbury joining the Chief Rabbi on a visit to Auschwitz to show joint solidarity against extreme hostility and genocide. The Archbishop called it “a place of utter profanity” and spoke of the collective corruption and moral sickness that made the Holocaust possible.
Would the pair show the same spirit of righteous solidarity by visiting Gaza? The scale of horror might be different but the moral sickness is just as obscene. And this being the Holy Land the profanity is many times worse.
The Pope too had been to Auschwitz to pray for the people murdered there. “I had to come here as a duty to truth and to those that suffered,” he said and spoke of the Nazis’ mania for destruction and domination.
Gaza. Palestinians at the Rafah Crossing into Egypt.
Very commendable. But he wasn’t so keen to come and pray for those suffering in Gaza, victims of much the same kind of criminal insanity.
Nevertheless, he turned up at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and the Western (Wailing) Wall, and hobnobbed with the chief rabbis… but not with his brave priest and the shattered congregation in Gaza.
What had happened to his ‘duty to truth’?
After my visit to Gaza in late 2007, 18 months after Israel’s merciless squeeze began, I wrote:
Fuel is running out, so are basics like washing powder. Shattered infrastructure and food shortages mean serious public health problems. Power cuts disrupt hospitals and vital drugs cannot be kept refrigerated. Thousands look death in the face as medicare collapses.
A friend emailed: “Today in Gaza we have no cement to build graves for those who die.”
The subjugation and dispossession of Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land continues. It remains a mystery to me why our largely Christian democracy in Britain slavishly supports the Middle East ethnocracy that’s doing this…
The last six years have seen things go from bad to worse – much worse. Palestinians in the Holy Land, and especially Gaza, need to be shown that the Christian Church cares about them even if nobody else does. So where are these extravagantly robed and mitred Men of God when needed?
No repetition of the Benedict debacle, please
Archbishop Rowan Williams, visiting in 2010, did manage to get into Gaza. But as far as I could discover he made no public statement about the wretched conditions there, nor did he reveal his findings to the House of Lords where he had the support of a large gaggle of bishops. This despite his claim to be “in a unique position to bring the needs and voices of those fighting poverty, disease and the effects of conflict, to the attention of national and international policy makers”.
And despite his declaration that “Christians need to witness boldly and clearly”.
And despite his urging greater awareness of the humanitarian crisis to ensure that the people of Gaza were not forgotten.
The Israelis, I heard, refused him access to Gaza from the start and only at the last minute allowed the Archbishop an hour or so, just enough for a quick visit to the Ahli Hospital and nowhere else. For that concession one wonders if he had to sign a gagging order.
Gaza under siege. Operation Cast Lead, 22 Days: December 2008 – January 2009
His website, however, described how he, like the Pope, hobnobbed with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and paid respects to Yad Vashem and the Holocaust. He also talked with the President of Israel, who no doubt enjoyed his guest’s frustration at being prevented from seeing the horrors that had been inflicted on Gaza.
And news of any get-together with senior Islamic figures on the ground was conspicuously absent, leaving a question-mark over his commitment to inter-faith engagement.
Why on earth did he agree to fraternize with Jewish political and religious dignitaries when it was clear that his wish to carry out his Christian duty in Gaza would be obstructed? Does Lambeth Palace not realize that meekly accepting such insults only serves to legitimize the Israelis’ illegal occupation and gives a stamp of approval to the brutal siege of Gaza, the daily death-dealing air strikes against civilians, the persecution of Muslim and Christian communities and the regime’s utter contempt for international law and human rights?
One can only hope the Vatican realizes it too and avoids a repetition of the Benedict debacle.
The Israelis walk all over fawning sycophants masquerading as Western political leaders. Our spiritual leaders, however, are supposed to be made of sterner stuff and to have the moral backbone to face down evil.
Related Articles:
Israel Charged with War Crimes and Genocide
The Staggering Cost of Israel to Americans
Cut Zionist genocide, feed Americans instead
Top Ten Reasons to Oppose U.S. aid to Israel
Stuart Littlewood is writer-photographer in the UK. His articles are published widely on the web. He is author of the book Radio Free Palestine. Stuart’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper, tells the plight of the Palestinians under brutal occupation. “Radio Free Palestine is a cry form the heart, written in moral anger by a person who bothered to leave his comfortable surroundings far from the suffering of another people, the Palestinians, and share, witness, expose and protest in the strongest voice he could find at what he saw and heard, what so few others have even cared to see or hear.” It can now be read on the internet by visiting www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk.
Radio Free Palestine series:
A Wake-up Call — Stuart Littlewood
A Story of Betrayal – 1
A Story of Betrayal – 2
A Story of Betrayal – 3
One Land, Two Peoples, Three Religions – 1
One Land, Two Peoples, Three Religions – 2
One Land, Two Peoples, Three Religions – 3
Short URL: http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/?p=230889
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Posted by Stuart Littlewood on Dec 5 2013, With 0 Reads, Filed under Editors’ Picks, Europe, Global, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United Kingdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
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