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ISTANBUL: Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko and the Istanbul-based Orthodox patriarch on Saturday (Nov 3) signed an accord that paves the way for the recognition of an independent Ukrainian church, provoking new fury in Moscow. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I had on Oct 11 agreed to recognise the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Moscow Patriarchate, a move that was welcomed with jubilation by Kiev but condemned as "catastrophic" in Moscow. On a visit to Istanbul that will see him hold talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Poroshenko signed an agreement setting out the steps needed to formalise the...

Last week, the Lepanto Institute reported on $240,000 the CCHD provided to an LGBT-advocating organization in San Francisco. Click here to read the report.For five consecutive years, from 2012–2017, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) annual granting agency called the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) provided a total of $280,000 to a radical organization involved in the promotion of homosexuality and abortion. The Community Alliance of Tenants (CAT) received the following grants: * $65,000 (2016–2017) * $50,000 (2015–2106) * $60,000 (2014–2015) * $55,000 (2013–2014) * $50,000 (2012–2013) It is important to note that this money was provided...

I still believe there is a Faithful, praying remnant left in America to stay the Hand of Judgement. Otherwise Hillary would have won and Freedom would have been lost. We are promised that "Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there I am in your midst." PLEASE join me in prayer not once but several times today. Just take a moment at your desk and silently ask for divine protection for America. 1) Pray that the GOP retains the House and senate. The do nothing establishment doesn't deserve victory but the alternative is far worse. 2) Pray that...

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 1, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – There’s a terrible problem with the Catholic Church when some of its leaders are pushing LGBT propaganda in conflict with Church teachings, Canonist Father Gerald Murray said recently, and true accompaniment means telling a same-sex attracted person not to act upon their sexual inclination. Murray and The Catholic Thing Editor-in-chief Robert Royal offered straight talk on Catholic teaching once again on the Oct. 25 edition of EWTN’s World Over program when discussing the just concluded Youth Synod. Host Raymond Arroyo asked the two about the significance of the Church working with the term...

“And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were...

'The condition of every mission in the Church is that we are united to the Risen Christ', the Pope saidIf one’s work as a Catholic is not united to Christ Jesus, it is no longer the “mission” to which the Church is called, Pope Francis told a group of religious brothers Monday. “Let us not forget that the condition of every mission in the Church is that we are united to the Risen Christ as branches to the vine. Otherwise what we do is social activism,” the pope said Oct. 29. “This is why I repeat to you the exhortation...

The Pope speaks to the Scalabrinians of the “drama of a demographic winter and of a closure of the doors”: migrants have built Europe“Today there is a wave of closure towards the foreigner” and “there are many situations of foreigners trafficked”: this is the complaint that Pope Francis pronounced when he received the Scalabrinian missionaries, who have always been close to migrants and refugees, underlining that “wellbeing is suicidal” because it leads to “a demographic winter” and the “closing of the doors”, and recalls that Europe “was not born this way, but was made by many waves of migration over...

Join Freepers throughout the world to pray for PRESIDENT TRUMP and VICE-PRESIDENT PENCE and for AMERICA: All Levels of Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, Health Care Systems and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. —1 John 5:14 Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. Please join us in prayer of remembrance of the dead, and for the safety of our borders, our troops and our elections.

Bishop Martin Holley claims he was removed at the behest of Cardinal WuerlOne day after he was removed as head of the Diocese of Memphis, Bishop Martin Holley told CNA that he wants to be transparent about the reasons for his removal. He says the decision was not about mismanagement, or past allegations of sexual misconduct. Instead, he believes that he was removed at the behest of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, former Archbishop of Washington, who influenced or collaborated with apostolic nuncio Archbishop Christophe Pierre to excise him from episcopal ministry. Bishop Holley says he has nothing to hide. The bishop...

October 24, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Two Vatican specialists are reporting today that, according to their sources, the Vatican might well solve the ongoing dispute with the German Jesuit St. Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt by allowing Father Ansgar Wucherpfennig to remain its rector in spite of his public defense of homosexuality and female confessors. Father Arturo Sosa himself, the controversial Superior General of the Jesuit Order, might now be the one to vouch for the orthodoxy of Father Wucherpfennig. A few weeks ago, German media had made it public that Father Wucherpfennig did not receive the...

Vatican’s proposed Soviet-style tactic to quash dissent invites questions, derision October 29, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The Vatican has indicated that it will adopt the tactics of leftist activists and seek to silence the voices of those who don’t fully agree with the agenda of the current pontificate. The final Youth Synod Document proposes a system to “certify” Catholic sites in order to counteract what it deems to be “fake news about the Church.” “Final document from #Synod2018 suggests that in the digital age there is a need to certify Catholic websites in order to verify if the groups are...

A former formation tutor alleged that seminary authorities were failing to confront a problemA leading English seminary has rejected allegations that it failed to address a “gay subculture”. Last week, Fr David Marsden, a former formation tutor at St Mary’s College, Oscott, wrote an open letter to the Bishops of England, Wales and Scotland, in which he claimed that he had been “fired from the college for striving to uphold the Church’s teaching on homosexuality”. Vatican directives, most recently in 2005, have said that the Church “cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present...

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand, October 23, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – An Australian bishop recently told priests that admitting women to the priesthood in the Church's current state of affairs would be like pouring new wine into old wine skins, but that a "transformation of the priesthood" was underway. Vincent Long Van Nguyen, Bishop of the Parramatta Diocese of Sydney, Australia gave an address in September to the New Zealand National Assembly of Diocesan Clergy about the current crises rocking the Church. Blaming the clerical abuse crisis on a faulty conception of the priesthood, Long mentioned women’s ordination as a possibility – but...

'As Christ's Church, we want to listen to you with love,' says Holy FatherSpeaking on behalf of all adult Catholics, Pope Francis formally closed the Synod of Bishops by asking young people for forgiveness. “Forgive us if often we have not listened to you; if, instead of opening our hearts, we have filled your ears. As Christ’s Church, we want to listen to you with love” because young people’s lives are precious in God’s eyes and “in our eyes, too,” the Pope said in his homily. The Mass, celebrated in St Peter’s Basilica, closed a month-long synod on young people,...

Many Roman emperors tried to destroy Christianity. One of them was Diocletian and he was particularly violent in his hatred of the Bible and Christianity. He killed so many Christians with such outrageous cruelties and destroyed so many Bibles that many Christians went underground and hid themselves from the wrath. When it seemed to Diocletian that he had made an end of them, he had a medal coined with this motto on it: “The Christian religion is destroyed, and the worship of the Roman gods are restored.” Boy, he knows different now, don’t he? He knows different now.

The Patriarch dismisses arguments against his unilateral actions as “black propaganda”Finally responding to the pushback against his Patriarchate’s unilateral actions in Ukraine, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has insisted that he will not back down in Ukraine, meaning he will continue to work towards creating an autocephalous Church in Ukraine, although the nation is already the canonical territory of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the headship of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine. Speaking at a meeting of the city government of the Greek diaspora in Constantinople, Pat. Bartholomew argued that his actions are based on the sacred canons...

Q: For years, Pope Francis seemed to be coated in Teflon. Whatever he said or did, the media would spin it in his favor, and demonize his critics. His public humility stunts bought him a ton of goodwill. So did his nod-and-a-wink statements downplaying sexual morals. Now finally some of his choices appear to be costing him something. Could you please explain the scandals surrounding Pope Francis?A: Sure. They come in four flavors. Imagine a cone with four scoops of gelato, maybe from the Old Bridge Gelateria right down the road from St. Peter’s Basilica. (The best gelato in Rome,...

NEW YORK CITY, October 22, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) ― A former religion editor of Newsweek has published an article in a liberal Catholic magazine about networks of sexually active homosexual priests and prelates in the Catholic Church Kenneth L. Woodward, an award-winning journalist, editor and author, acknowledged in an article written for the left-leaning Commonweal magazine that homosexuality has played a role in the clerical sexual abuse scandals and their cover-up. In Woodward’s essay “Double Lives,” he discusses the outing of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick as a sexual predator and alleges that sexually active homosexual clerics protect each other. “ … It...

VATICAN – While European bishops discuss how to bring young people back to the Church at the 2018 Synod of Bishops, one bishop from Cameroon said that he has the opposite problem. “My churches are all bursting, and I don’t have space to keep the young people,” said Bishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Mamfe said at a Vatican press conference Oct. 24. “And my shortest Mass would be about two and a half hours,” he added. A study by Pew Research Center in August 2018 found that church attendance and prayer frequency was highest in sub-Saharan Africa and lowest in...

Cardinal Zen is a retired bishop of Hong Kong.HONG KONG — Last month the Vatican announced that it had come to a provisional agreement with the government of China over the appointment of Catholic bishops. Supporters of the deal say that it finally brings unity after longstanding division — between an underground Church loyal to the pope and an official church approved by the Chinese authorities — and that with it, the Chinese government has for the first time recognized the authority of the pope. In fact, the deal is a major step toward the annihilation of the real Church...