Pope Francis to get official welcome from U.S. President Barack Obama

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Pope Francis arrives in the United States, he will get an airport welcome that few world leaders have ever received: a plane-side greeting from President Barack Obama.

The extraordinary gesture on Sept. 22 is just the beginning of the pomp and protocol that Washington will put on display to welcome the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics and the head of Vatican City on his first U.S. visit.

The next day, Francis will be just the third pope to visit the White House, being greeted as most heads of state are, with his car pulling slowly up the South Lawn's driveway to the spot where a red carpet will be rolled out and Obama and his wife, Michelle, will be waiting.

Thousands of invited guests, including many Catholics, will gather on the lawn to receive Francis.

"Like millions of Americans, I am very much looking forward to welcoming Pope Francis to the United States," Obama told a prayer breakfast this year.

The president and the pope met for the first time in March 2014 at the Vatican, and Obama has been outspoken about his admiration for the 78-year-old native of Argentina. Despite differences over abortion, the two have found common ground on such issues as U.S. policy toward Cuba and Iran, climate change, and poverty and income inequality.

"So much of arrival ceremonies are steeped in history and tradition," said Anita McBride, who was an assistant to President George W. Bush, who received Pope Benedict XVI at the White House in April 2008. "Every arrival ceremony is important."

Francis has shown little interest in protocol and the trappings of his office, shunning both the fancy papal apartment and motorcade, for example. But he does put himself through the motions of diplomatic etiquette to be respectful of his hosts.

The motions at the White House for Francis will last for just about 90 minutes.

Shortly after he arrives on the South Lawn, the anthems of the U.S. and the Vatican will play, following military honors that include a 21-gun salute and band members dressed in colonial garb. Obama will welcome the pope with remarks followed by a reciprocal address from Francis. They will then head inside the White House and reappear on the balcony.

Inside, Francis will sign the official guest book. He and Obama will exchange gifts before their Oval Office meeting.

While a handshake is considered an appropriate way to greet Francis, Catholics have the option of kissing the gold ring the pope wears on his right hand, according to the State Department protocol office. Vice President Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, opted not to kiss the ring after he attended Francis' installation Mass at the Vatican in March 2013.

The pope should also be addressed as "Your Holiness."

Popes and U.S. presidents share a nearly 100-year history of interaction, with more than two dozen meetings since the first one at the Vatican on Jan. 4, 1919, between President Woodrow Wilson and Pope Benedict XV after World War I.

President Jimmy Carter received the first papal visit to the White House by John Paul II in October 1979.

Nearly 30 years passed before Pope Benedict XVI would make the same trip.

Benedict's visit was doubly memorable because it fell on his 81st birthday. More than 13,500 people invited to the South Lawn for the official welcoming ceremony, one of the largest-ever crowds there, sang "Happy Birthday" twice to the German-born pope. The White House pastry chef also presented Benedict with a tiered birthday cake.

Bush and his wife, Laura, greeted Benedict at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The military base just outside of Washington is the official point of entry for visiting foreign dignitaries.

Obama travels there regularly for his out-of-town trips, but rarely goes just to welcome visitors. He'll be accompanied next week by his wife.

"The president definitely wanted to do this" for Francis, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said.

Source

Threat against pope foiled but pontiff’s outgoing nature poses security headache, U.S. lawmaker says

   Threat against pope foiled

WASHINGTON – The United States has broken up a threat against Pope Francis, who will visit Washington and other U.S. cities this month, a lawmaker said Sunday.

No details of the threat were given.

U.S. authorities are concerned about the visit because the pope likes to get out among the huge crowds that gather to see him, said Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

“He’s a very compassionate man. He likes to get out with the people,” McCaul said on ABC’s “This Week” talk show.

“With that comes a large security risk. We’re monitoring very closely threats against the pope as he comes into the United States. We have disrupted one particular case,” McCaul said.

He said he learned of the threat, details of which he did not give, in a classified setting with the Secret Service.

McCaul added, “as that date approaches, I think we’re all very — will be very diligent to protect him as he comes into the United States.”

The pope arrives in the United States on Sept. 22 and is due to visit Washington, New York and Philadelphia.

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A cautionary epistle to Pope Francis before his U.S. visit next week

Newchurch of the Poor: Pope Francis-Bergoglio enforcing his Marxist Agenda to the nations. Next stop U.S.A...

If he's true to form, the affable leader of Earth's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics will land in Washington next week with a smile on his face and a suspicion in his heart. In addressing the 70 million Americans in his flock, and a joint session of Congress, Pope Francis may use his bully pulpit to intensify his previous critiques of free-market excesses.

He repeatedly has denounced unrestrained capitalism. His attacks on "compulsive consumerism" and industrial damage to the world's ecology came to a head during a fiery July speech in Bolivia. He said poor nations shouldn't be mere sources of raw materials and cheap labor, and called the unfettered pursuit of money "the dung of the devil":

"Once capital becomes an idol and guides people's decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system," he said, "it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home."

Like all of us, Francis is a product of his past. That past is rooted in Argentina, where some of his countrymen decry the "savage capitalism" they've experienced at the hands of U.S. mining and agricultural companies. The pope is making the first U.S. visit of his 78 years; he can say as much or as little as he pleases about Latin America's experience with the world's most muscular capitalist economy.

Some of the pope's criticisms are warranted. We write frequently about reversing environmental perils, creating economic opportunities for the poor, and enforcing legal and ethical restrictions on global companies — including the many headquartered in Chicago.

By riveting attention on economic exploitation, a man renowned as the pontiff of the poor has wildly succeeded. But in the 30 months of his papacy, Francis hasn't focused on a companion truth: When it functions legally and ethically, capitalism does more to uplift people from even severe poverty than has any government policy, economic ideology, or redistribution of wealth.

That rescue began with the Industrial Revolution in decades bracketing 1800 and has quickened as free-market economies blanket more of the world. A United Nations initiative to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger — the Millennium Development Goals — in July reported that over the last 25 years, the number of people living in extreme poverty has plunged by more than half, from 1.9 billion to 836 million today. Also since 1990, the share of undernourished people in developing countries has fallen by almost half, from 23.3 percent to 12.9 percent.

The greatest uplift to better and longer lives occurred in China as that nation embraced capitalism: Astonishingly, the extreme-poverty rate has plummeted from 84 percent in 1980 to less than 10 percent today. India has experienced a similar (if similarly incomplete) trajectory since its government liberalized regulation of the economy in 1991.

Escape from extreme poverty isn't a high bar; critics of Western capitalism more often cite income inequality within nations. Here, too, much can be done to give more opportunities and incentives to those moored in poverty. What the critics can miss, though, is the steady rise in living, health and education standards for poor Americans. "It is true that the share of all U.S. income earned by the lowest quintile has fallen slightly since the mid-1970s, so that U.S. income inequality has risen," writes economic historian Edd Noell of California's Westmont College. "Nonetheless, the growth in the real earnings of the poorest quintile has been large. On average, members of the lowest quintile had dramatically more real income in 2010 than in 1980."

We would be shabby Chicagoans if we didn't cite the late University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman's unequivocal summary of evidence linking market freedoms to rising prosperity: "The only cases in which the masses have escaped (grinding poverty), the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that."

That said, proponents of free-market capitalism can't boast that its effects are net positive without admitting it also sows insecurity and destroys old orders. Many people fear dynamic economies, knowing some of them will suffer harsh consequences. Which is paradoxical: Capitalism thrives on voluntary, not violent, acts, with people creating goods and services that other people want to buy.

In a 2013 report, "Toward the end of poverty: The world's next great leap forward," The Economist synthesized how robust growth born of competitive instincts has helped people rise: "Poverty rates started to collapse toward the end of the 20th century largely because developing-country growth accelerated, from an annual rate of 4.3 percent in 1960-2000 to 6 percent in 2000-2010. Around two-thirds of poverty reduction within a country comes from growth. Greater equality also helps, contributing the other third."

Which explains why the U.N.'s goal of cutting global poverty in half between 1990 and 2015 was achieved five years early.

Many of the 265 popes before Francis championed serious causes. Most recently, John Paul II crusaded against communism, and Benedict XVI decried moral drift that devalued human lives.

Now comes Pope Francis' determination to help people by the hundreds of millions escape destitution. Excellent. Perhaps during his visit he'll discuss how market economies already have let other hundreds of millions prosper, and bless capitalism for its saving grace.

Source

Saudi Arabia offers Germany 200 mosques!

Saudi Arabia offers Germany 200 mosques — one for every 100 refugees who arrived last weekend!!

Saudi Arabia has reportedly responded to the growing number of people fleeing the Middle East for western Europe - by offering to build 200 mosques in Germany.

Syria's richer Gulf neighbours have been accused of not doing their fair share in the humanitarian crisis, with Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the UAE also keeping their doors firmly shut to asylum-seekers.

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which quoted a report in the Lebanese newspaper Al Diyar, Saudi Arabia would build one mosque for every 100 refugees who entered Germany in extraordinary numbers last weekend.

It would be unfair to suggest that the Gulf Arab states have done nothing to help the estimated four million Syrians who have fled their country since the start of the conflict in 2011.

Just this week, the Al-Hayat newspaper reported that 500,000 Syrians had found homes in Saudi Arabia since the civil war began - as workers, not refugees.

There have also been significant contributions from rich individuals towards the upkeep of refugee camps round the Syrian border, estimated by the BBC to total around $900 million (£600 million).

But amid a history of competition between the Gulf states and Iranian-allied nations, there is a deep fear that allowing an influx of Syrian refugees could also let in Syrians loyal to Bashar al-Assad.

There also exists a more general concern about demographic change, leaving the states opposed to the idea of welcoming refugees. In the UAE, foreign nationals already outnumber citizens by more than five to one.

Back in Germany, Angela Merkel welcomed two refugee families at a home for asylum-seekers in the Berlin suburb of Spandau on Thursday.

She told reporters after the visit: "Their integration will certainly take place in part via the children, who will learn German very quickly in kindergarten. And I hope and believe that the great majority will want to learn our language very quickly."

Whether she will welcome Saudi Arabia's reported offer, which Al Diyar noted would "have to go through the federal authorities", remains to be seen.

Source

Related: Pope Francis calls on all of Europe's Catholics to house migrants

Satanic Fruits of Bergoglio: Fast and Free Annulments on the way!

Kyrie Eleison: Annulments to be handed out like candy in Newchurch of Rot!!

Pope radically simplifies Catholic marriage annulment procedures!

by Philip Pullella 

(Reuters) - Pope Francis on Tuesday made it simpler and swifter for Catholics to secure a marriage annulment, the most radical such reform for 250 years, and told bishops to be more welcoming to divorced couples.

Under the old norms, it often took years to win an annulment, with hefty legal fees attached. Francis said the procedure should be free and the new rules mean that a marriage might be declared null and void in just 45 days in some cases.

The announcement came the week after Francis signaled a more merciful approach to women who had obtained abortions and was another sign of his drive to shake up the hidebound Roman Catholic Church and try to soften some of its more rigid rules.

In a document known as a Motu Proprio, Latin for "by his own initiative", Francis reaffirmed traditional teaching on the "indissolubility of marriage", making clear that the Vatican was not in any form promoting or sanctioning divorce.

However, he said he would make it easier for separated couples to obtain an annulment -- a ruling whereby the Church decides that a marriage was not valid in the first place because certain prerequisites such as free will, psychological maturity and openness to having children were lacking.

Francis eliminated a previously mandatory review of an annulment decision by a second tribunal and gave bishops sweeping powers to judge quickly the most clear-cut cases.

He said he had decided to streamline procedures so that Catholics who sought annulments should not be "long oppressed by darkness of doubt" over whether they could have their marriages declared null and void.

MOST CHANGE IN 250 YEARS

Monsignor Pio Vito Pinto, dean of the Vatican appeals court that rules on annulments, told a news conference the new rules were the most substantive changes to the laws since the papacy of Benedict XIV, who reigned from 1740 to 1758.

"The pope is seeking to respond pastorally to the tens of thousands of couples who are experiencing profound pain and alienation as a result of broken marriages," said Father James Bretzke, theology professor at Boston College.

Francis took charge of the 1.2 billion member Church in 2013, replacing Pope Benedict, a theological hardliner well liked by conservatives for seeking to reaffirm traditional Catholic identity.

The Argentine pope has appeared a much more approachable figure and has spoken repeatedly of the need for the Church to show mercy and understand the needs of Catholics struggling to live by its rules.

Catholics who divorce and remarry in civil ceremonies are considered by the Church to be still married to their first spouse and living in a state of sin. This bars them from receiving sacraments such as communion.

While not changing this position, Francis wrote on Tuesday that bishops should show "particular pastoral concern" for divorced and remarried Catholics.

Many couples and priests have complained that the complex procedures discourage even those with legitimate grounds for an annulment from trying to obtain one.

Some 50,000 annulment procedures were launched last year, nearly half of them in the United States, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

Francis is due to pay a landmark visit to the United States next month, where his progressive views on climate change and condemnation of rampant capitalism look certain to put him at loggerheads with Republican presidential hopefuls.

Source

Eleison Comments - Issue CDXXV (425)

Charity’s Order

Often our world of lies says, “Black is white.”

With God for measure, Catholics measure right.

What does the Catholic Church think of “racism”? Or of “anti-semitism”? Or of “sexism”? Or of “homophobia”? And so on and so on. In a liberal world where everybody is supposed to be nice to everybody, is it not surprising how “political correctness” seems to come up regularly with a new class of people for all of us to hate? The Catholic Church, following its divine Master, says we are to love our neighbour and to hate nobody, but it does not say we should love all our fellow-men indiscriminately. Let us see how a great Catholic theologian puts order into our love of God and man. Here are the bare bones of the 13 Articles of St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, 2a 2ae, Question 26:—

1 Charity does have an order, because it is a friendship in supernatural bliss, and that bliss has its starting-point in God, and wherever you have things following from a starting-point, you have an order. (Notice how the Catholic immediately refers a major question to God. What might liberals immediately refer to as the starting-point of their “niceness”? Hatred of Nazis? Seriously . . . )

2 Charity must love God above neighbour, because charity is a friendship in bliss, and all bliss for myself or my neighbour has its source in God. (Where do liberals place the source of their happiness? In self-fulfillment? In their fellow-men? These are relatively poor forms of happiness.)

3 God must be loved above self, because all (unspoiled) creatures, each in their way, naturally love the common good above their particular good, and God is the natural and supernatural common good of all.

4 Spiritual self must be loved above spiritual neighbour, because I am closer to me than I am to my neighbour so that if I do not love me (spiritually), I am unlikely to love my neighbour. But –

5 Spiritual neighbour must be loved above corporal self, i.e., my own body, because spirit comes before body, because spirit partakes directly in bliss, while body partakes only indirectly (through spirit).

6 Some neighbours must be loved more than others, because they all vary in their closeness to one of the two poles of charity, objective to God, or subjective to me. Saints are closer to God, neighbours to me.

7 Objectively, Saints will be loved more than relatives, but subjectively neighbours will be loved more intensely than Saints, because in a variety of ways they are closer – “Charity begins at home.”

8 Essentially, blood-relatives will be loved above non-relatives,because blood-ties are natural, fixed and substantial. Accidentally however, other ties of friendship can be more powerful.

9 Objectively, parents are to be loved m ore than children, because as sources of life and of many benefits, parents are closer to God, but subjectively children can be closer to us for several reasons.

10 Father should be loved more than mother, as such, because by the part each plays in giving us life, the father is formal and active whereas the mother is material ( maternal ) and passive (St Thomas was writing about human beings who are normal and not de-natured as they are today).

11 Objectively, parents are to be loved more than wife, because as sources of life and of many benefits they are closer to God, but subjectively she who is “one flesh” with her husband is to be loved the more.

12 Objectively, somebody doing good to us is to be loved more than somebody we do good to, because they are a source of good to us, but by subjective closeness we love the more somebody that we do good to, for various reasons, e.g . “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

13 There will still be an order of charity in Heaven, especially the loving of God above all. Also the objective grading of neighbour for his closeness to God will count more there than it does here on earth.

“Racism”? – which races are closer to God, or to me? They are not all the same. “Anti-semitism”? – are “Semites” friends or enemies of God? “Sexism”? – do today’s women help or hinder me on my way to God? “Homophobia”? – how do “homos” stand with God?

Kyrie eleison.

Bergoglio softening hearts of America's In name only and Lukewarm Catholics!

Pope Francis' papacy softening hearts of America's 'Modernist Catholics'

By Kevin Truong 

A new poll suggests that a substantial portion of Americans who have left the Catholic Church but still feel connected to it could be swayed by Pope Francis.

For Darcy Fargo, the conservative political teachings of the faith were the hardest thing to overcome when she returned to Catholicism a few months ago.

Mrs. Fargo had grown up Catholic, but in college found herself moving away from the church, so much so that for years she was a staunch, “militant” atheist, who would sometimes deride other for their religious beliefs. It wasn’t until a friend challenged her to be open-minded about faith that she started to delve back into it.

A chance meeting with a priest led to the New York resident's first religious experience for more than a decade.

I just got the sense of awe, happiness, and something greater that I had lost in the 10 to 12 years I left the church,” she says.

A new poll from the Pew Research Center shows that Fargo’s experience is relatively rare among Catholics, but it also suggests that the papacy of Pope Francis could begin to change that.

Seventy-seven percent of respondents who considered themselves ex-Catholics said they couldn't imagine themselves going back to the Roman Catholic Church. 

But the poll also found that as many as 9 percent of Americans are “cultural Catholics,” people who do not consider themselves religiously Catholic, but culturally Catholic or partially Catholic in other ways.

And nearly half of them – 43 percent – were open to possibly rejoining the church, the data showed.

Significantly, the more-liberal leanings of the new pope neatly embrace the worldview of cultural Catholics. And beyond cultural Catholics, the poll showed that practicing American Catholics, too, were surprisingly open to nontraditional family structures, sexuality, and contraception. 

Some 66 percent of Catholics, for example, said that it was acceptable for children to be raised by a gay or lesbian couple, according to the poll.

The pope's effort to appeal to the moderate views of a broad base of Catholics, instead of appeasing hyperconservatives in the church leadership, is at the core of what has made him attractive to many American Catholics, says Bruce Morrill, a Catholic studies professor at Vanderbilt University and a Jesuit priest.

“Pope Francis has proven to be a populist, not in the political sense, but in the fact that’s he’s trying to find a middle way, he’s trying to connect with the population at the base, not at the extremes,” Professor Morrill says.

According to the study, a majority of American Catholics do not find it sinful to use contraception or cohabit with a romantic partner outside of marriage, especially if they have a child to care for. Their thoughts on same-sex marriage are evenly split, with 46 percent on both sides of whether the Catholic Church “should recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples.”

And while the majority of Catholics do believe that abortion is sinful, that belief ranks low when respondents were asked what was "essential" to being a Catholic, behind things like “having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” and “working to help the poor and needy.”

Fargo says she still has trouble reconciling her own moral code with official church doctrine, particularly in the case of same-sex marriage and contraception, which she and her husband used after having their first child, who was diagnosed with a form of autism.

“My best friend happens to be gay, and I had a hard time seeing how their relationship is any more or less valued than the relationship I had with my husband,” she says, adding: “My son is the love of my life, and I would do anything for him, but having another child who is special-needs might be too much for me to handle.”

At least for now, she lies somewhere in the middle of traditional church teachings and her own beliefs, a place she says she feels most American Catholics are in.

“Oftentimes it’s an either-or world we live in,” Fargo says. “But I don’t believe our God is like that, and I don’t believe our faith is like that.”

The increased focus on charity and mercy during the papacy of Pope Francis has boosted the popularity of the Catholic leader across America and the globe – both inside and out of the Catholic community. Currently favorability ratings of Pope Francis sit at 66 percent.

“I think Pope Francis is better at stressing forgiveness,” Fargo said. “And softening the perception of an all-or-nothing attitude towards Catholicism.”

Erin Donnelly remembers starting to turn away from the Catholic Church because this attitude. On the first day of her Catholic high school’s religion class, the teacher talked about the horrifying nature of abortion. Same thing happened on the second day. And the third.

Noticing a pattern, Ms. Donnelly took out her notebook and made a tally mark for every class where the teacher negatively mentioned abortion.

She had a mark for every single day until the end of the school year.

Donnelly was born into a Catholic family and went through a religious education. By middle school she says she was “really Catholic.”

That changed at Catholic school, where she was hit hard with ideas about abortion, sexuality, and contraception that seemed overly harsh and out-of-touch with her experience.

“In high school when they pushed these really conservative things on you, that really turned me off,” she says. “It dwelled on these minuscule political points that moved away from the main point of the religion, which is to help your neighbor, be kind, and believe in God.”

While she doesn’t practice regularly anymore, Donnelly says that “being Catholic is a part of who I am as a person and a part of my family history.”

In that way, Donnelly fits neatly into Pew's cultural Catholic demographic. What was perhaps most surprising about the poll, says Pew Research Center associate director of research Gregory Smith, was the finding that about 45 percent of the American population have had some relationship with Catholicism.

Since assuming the papacy two years ago, Francis has shown a renewed focus on social justice and mercy, putting him in line with the more-liberalized strain of American Catholicism found in the poll.

In 2013, he gave his famous “who am I to judge” statement when confronted with a question on how he would deal with a homosexual cleric. Last month, the pope reiterated his idea that the church should be open to Catholics who have divorced and remarried, saying there were "no closed doors" for them.

And on Tuesday, he met the divisive issue of abortion with a message of compassion, using his authority to allow all Catholic priests around the world to offer reconciliation to women who have terminated their pregnancies.

“I think Francis’ take on the church will appeal to Roman Catholics and even young Catholics because it appeals to the best desires in life,” Morrill said.

Even so, Morrill cautioned against tying the popularity of the pope with an ability to bring people back into the church; former Catholics have left the church for many reasons.

But Donnelly says that Pope Francis is doing the right things to bring former Catholics back.

“Especially when you grow up in the church, having a progressive leader makes being curious about your faith a much less scary proposition,” Donnelly says.

Donnelly, who works as a newspaper reporter, recently found herself on assignment in a Catholic Church not on Dec. 25 for the first time in years, with a new open attitude toward her faith.

“I found value in going to mass and taking communion,” she says thinking back. 

“I felt that sense of community.”

 Source: Christian Monitor.com.  

POPE FRANCIS SAYS VATICAN WILL SHELTER FAMILIES FLEEING WAR, HUNGER!

Bergoglio The enemy within...

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican will shelter two families of refugees who are "fleeing death" from war or hunger, Pope Francis announced Sunday as he called on Catholic parishes, convents and monasteries across Europe to do the same.

Francis cited Mother Teresa, the European-born nun who cared for the poorest in India, in making his appeal in remarks to pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter's Square.

"Faced with the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees who are fleeing death by war and by hunger, and who are on a path toward a hope for life, the Gospel calls us to be neighbors to the smallest and most abandoned, to give them concrete hope," Francis said.

It's not enough to say "Have courage, hang in there," he added.

"May every parish, every religious community, every monastery, every sanctuary in Europe host a family, starting with my diocese of Rome," Francis said. He also asked bishops throughout Europe to have their dioceses take up his call to "express the Gospel in concrete terms and take in a family of refugees."

Bergoglio: you are Not a Christian if you do not reach DEEP into your pockets for the POOR!!

The Vatican is a tiny city-state and some of its citizens, including families with children, live in apartments inside its ancient walls. It has two parish churches, including St. Peter's Basilica.

Francis said two of the Vatican's parishes will welcome two refugee families, but did not give details. A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, quoted the pope's chief alms-giver as saying the Vatican is now deciding which families will be hosted.

He has chosen mercy as the overarching theme of his papacy. Practicing what he preaches, he has already made free showers at the Vatican available to Rome's homeless and has barbers available for haircuts for the needy, among other initiatives.

Thousands of migrants and refugees, many fleeing war and persecution, have streamed into Germany and Austria over the weekend after being stuck in Hungary for days.

Italy has nearly 120,000 people who were brought to its shores after rescue at sea and who are hoping for asylum in Europe.

!!! An Italian cardinal calculated that the parishes in the predominantly Roman Catholic country could practically host them all!

With more than 27,000 parishes, if each parish hosted a family of four, more than 108,000 people would have shelter.

"I hope this wish comes true," Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco told a Catholic-affairs TV program on TV2000, adding, "It gives the idea of the possibilities that are in our country."

European bishops will discuss soon the pope's appeal for parishes to take in refugees, Bagnasco said.

"The European and Italian church is ready to mobilize to receive" refugees, he told Vatican Radio. The cardinal is a longtime leader of the Italian bishops conference and is an official of the European bishops conference.

"Yes, surely there will be a prompt response," Bagnasco said. "We will talk about it next week, when the heads of European bishops conferences meet in Jerusalem" for an annual gathering, the cardinal said.

Source

Vatican says 'no' to transsexual godparents amid Spain controversy!

TRANSGENDER - God Considers such to be an ABOMINATION!

He created them male and female... 

Genesis 5: 2 (Douay)

Vatican says 'no' to transsexual godparents amid Spain controversy...

(CNA/EWTN News).- A media firestorm arose in Spain after a transsexual woman, who considers herself a man, asked to be the godfather of her nephew – leading a diocese's bishop to turn to the Vatican for an answer.

After writing to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about the issue earlier this month, Bishop Rafael Zornoza Boy of Cádiz and Ceuta was told that since transsexual persons are not consistently living Church teaching, its “impossible” for them to fulfill their duties as a godparent.

The bishop wrote the letter after Alex Salinas, 21 years-old and born a woman, had requested to be the godfather of her nephew. 

In their response, the congregation – charged with safeguarding Catholic teaching – said that it is “impossible to allow” a person with transsexual behavior to be a baptismal godmother or godfather.

In a Sept. 1 statement, the bishop said he turned to the Vatican due to “confusion among some of the faithful” and “the complexity and media attention garnered by this issue,” as well as the pastoral implications the decision has.

In the Vatican’s full response – which the bishop provided in his statement – the congregation explained that transsexual behavior “reveals in a public way an attitude opposite to the moral imperative of solving the problem of sexual identity according to the truth of one's own sexuality.”

“Therefore it is evident that this person does not possess the requirement of leading a life according to the faith and in the position of godfather and is therefore unable to be admitted to the position of godfather or godmother,” they said, referring to canon 874 §3 in the Code of Canon Law.

However, the congregation stressed that there is “no discrimination toward (Alex), but only the recognition of an objective lack of the requirements, which by their nature are necessary to assume the ecclesial responsibility of being a godfather.”

In his statement, Bishop Zornoza points out that the role of godparents in the sacrament of baptism is assumed “before God and his Church and, in relation to the baptized, the duty of cooperating with the parents in (the child's) Christian formation, seeking to lead a life consistent with baptismal faith and faithfully fulfilling the inherent obligations.”

Godparents must be “firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptized – child or adult – on the road of Christian life,” the statement continues, referring to paragraph 1255 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The bishop also suggested that if candidates meeting the requirements to be a godparent are not found, the baptism can still be celebrated in the same form, since the figure of godparents is not necessary in this sacrament.

Bishop Zorzona recalled Pope Francis' words in his environment encyclical Laudato Si, in which the Pope said that “valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different.”

“In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment,” the Pope said, adding that “it is not a healthy attitude which would seek to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it.”

At the close of his statement, Bishop Zorzona emphasized that “the Church welcomes all persons with charity, desiring to help each one in their situation with tender mercy, but without denying the truth she preaches, which is offered to everyone as a path of faith to be freely accepted.”

Source