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Pope Benedict XVI has sacked two Vatican officials over the readmission of a British Holocaust-denying bishop to the Roman Catholic Church. He also abolished the Vatican department responsible for the lifting of the excommunication of Richard Williamson, who is one of the leaders of the Society of St Pius X. The rehabilitation, in January, threatened to undo decades of work to heal rifts between Catholics and Jews. The German-born Pope was forced to apologise to Jewish leaders and atoned by visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel in May. The incident made Pope Benedict, one of the most admired...

RALEIGH, Nc., Sept. 13 - A new discovery reveals a "mystery" never before seen. Investigative researcher Philip E. Dayvault, of Raleigh, NC, found in 2003 that the famed Sistine Chapel Ceiling fresco, painted by Michelangelo in 1512 and located at the Vatican in Rome, Italy, is also painted in allegory. Although the central panels of the Ceiling, or "historicals", are illustrated for literal interpretation, they also contain unique symbolic expression. Once decoded, Dayvault discovered that this expression graphically depicts the Shroud of Turin, in full and complete order. The Shroud of Turin is the traditional burial cloth of Jesus Christ....

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- With a touch of envy, Pope Benedict XVI told employees of the Vatican Library and the Vatican Secret Archives that he had hoped to retire 10 years ago and spend the rest of his life studying, researching and writing. "At the end of my 70th year of age, I would have liked it very much if the beloved John Paul II would have allowed me to dedicate myself to the study and research of the interesting documents and items you carefully safeguard," the pope told the employees June 25. "The Lord had other plans for me...

Christian minorities are being forced out of Muslim countries, The Associated Press reports, and the mass exodus is particularly noticeable in Bethlehem and throughout the Holy Land – the birthplace of Christianity. Until the rise of Islamofascism, economic necessity drove Palestinian Christians to emigrate to the West. Now it’s not their livelihoods that are at risk, but their lives ... In two weeks, Pope Benedict XVI will go to Turkey for a four-day visit, and will call on Muslim nations to respect the rights of religious minorities living within their borders – or as The Vatican puts, it "reciprocity,” in...

Once upon a time on Planet Earth — before the scourge of AIDS — the subject of condoms rarely came up in polite company. Today, condoms have become the coin of the political realm, while debates break out in the politest of places — from the Vatican to the Senate to the pulpit to the pew. In the past few days, reports from Rome have indicated that the Vatican is considering sanctioning the use of condoms among married couples when one of the partners is infected with AIDS. This move, though not yet a done deal, has been heralded as...

ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome Code: ZE05022001 Date: 2005-02-20 Fatima Visionary's Writings Provide New Insight Church Official Says No Novelties to Be Found COIMBRA, Portugal, FEB. 20, 2005 (Zenit.org).- The texts of Sister Lucia will not reveal more details of the Fatima apparition, but will provide more profound insight into the event. Father Jacinto Farias, president of the Scientific Commission of the Fatima Congress, made a statement shortly after the death last week of the last witness of the Fatima appartions that Sister Lucia's texts constitute a fundamental testimony for the Church. "Sister Lucia's experience is one...

Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered. The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went...

The pope's disgraceful tribute to Arafat Posted: November 13, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern From the way world leaders reacted to the death of Yasser Arafat, you could be forgiven if you had mistakenly believed that Mother Theresa had died. Kofi Annan, a man whose diplomatic career has been dedicated to friendship with tyrants and contempt for their victims, declared himself "deeply moved" by Arafat's death and ordered the U.N. flag flown at half-mast. This is not all that surprising given that Annan is the same man who overruled U.N. Gen. Romeo Dallaire in April 1994 and ordered him not to...

In an attempt to recoup some of the roughly $215 million allegedly stolen by financier Martin Frankel, insurance commissioners for five states sued the Vatican in federal court in Mississippi, Friday's Wall Street Journal reported. The suit alleges that Mr. Frankel tried to use the Catholic Church as "a front" to acquire insurance companies, and that a former Vatican judge, who has been arrested on criminal charges related to the Frankel case, was the Vatican's agent. The suit also claims that several high-ranking Vatican officials had varying degrees of knowledge about Mr. Frankel's attempts to acquire insurance companies through a...