Free Republic

Bettinelli reports: I just got this message from Rod Dreher: "On Sunday, The Dallas Morning News will begin publishing the results of a major yearlong investigation into a largely uncovered aspect of the Catholic sex abuse scandal. The series of stories are international in scope, and will make headlines nationally and overseas. I’m not at liberty to disclose details yet, but I’ve seen advanced copies of the articles, and they are devastating. I believe at this point, more details will be available on Friday morning, when one of the reporters on the series does an interview on National Public Radio’s...

ROME (AFP) - Pope John Paul (news - web sites) II is expected to warn President George W. Bush when the two men meet on June 4 that his policy in Iraq is wrong and the actions of US troops are damaging efforts to bring religions closer together, a senior Vatican official revealed. Cardinal Pio Laghi said the US-led occupation force in Iraq should be replaced by "a multinational presence which is not dominated by those who wanted and fought the war." It was not enough for a military force in Iraq not to be under US command, "it must...

"It is as it was." This, Peggy Noonan reports in the Opinion Journal, was the Pope's comment to his good friend Msgr. Stanislaw Dziwisz after watching "The Passion of Christ," Mel Gibson's much-maligned film. In other words, the Holy Father feels that Mel Gibson's film accurately shows how events unfolded in the last days of Christ on Earth. The Vatican has had no official comment on the movie, but Noonan in her latest column tells us that "John Paul II, who even with the challenges of his current illness has more good sense than many of his cardinals, knew of...