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Vatican spy story takes center stage as fraud trial resumesVATICAN CITY — The Vatican's big fraud and extortion trial resumes Friday after exposing some unseemly realities of how the Holy See operates, with a new spy story taking center stage that is more befitting of a 007 thriller than the inner workings of a papacy.According to written testimony obtained Thursday, one of Pope Francis' top advisers brought in members of the Italian secret service to sweep his office for bugs and commissioned intelligence reports from them, completely bypassing the Vatican's own police force in the process.The reported actions of Archbishop...

[Catholic Caucus] Archbishop Roche and Cardinal Braz de Aviz Refuse to Be Drawn on ‘Traditionis Custodes’ Application Document o try to get authoritative confirmation on the rumoured instruction about the application of Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, today I contacted the heads of two dicasteries most likely involved in issuing the document — Archbishop Arthur Roche, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.As they both had declined to respond to questions I had...

Parents sue Washington, DC for allowing minors to be vaccinated without parental knowledge or consentThis law now permits an eleven-year-old to override his or her parents’ express written directive, and the child’s school must falsify and withhold vaccine records from the parents to conceal the truth. The healthcare providers who vaccinate children against parental directives will be paid by the parents’ health insurance company with no documentation of paid-for services to parents.WASHINGTON, D.C., July 13, 2021 (Children’s Health Defense) – On Monday, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and the Parental Rights Foundation filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for...

Cardinal Becciu Is Francis’ “Scapegoat”The article of the Italian magazine L’Espresso which announced Cardinal Becciu's dismissal was created on September 24 at 10:12 am - 7 hours and 48 minutes before Francis actually fired Becciu.Moreover, Francis had an issue of L’Espresso in his hands while talking to Becciu. Vik van Brantegem asks on Korazym.org (November 19), "How did L'Espresso know that Becciu would be ‘expelled’, almost 8 hours before the actual ‘expulsion’?"His answer: Francis himself informed the magazine beforehand. Brantegem asks a second question: Why does Francis defend Bishop Zanchetta who was condemned in Argentina but not Cardinal Becciu who...

Francis’ closest collaborators prove how Pope has reinvented priesthood in Amazon exhortation They demonstrate how the Pope's new document is about more than a simple yes or no to married priests and female deacons. March 3, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – In the recent days, several key people who are either closely working with Pope Francis or who are otherwise closely linked to his reform agenda – Cardinal Michael Czerny, Archbishop Víctor Fernández, Austen Ivereigh, and Father Antônio Almeida – have now come out insisting that Pope Francis did not close the door to married priests in the Amazon in his...

Abp. Hebda Discourages Priests From Voting in Presidential Primary Theologian: Should tell priests to oppose 'Party of Death' MINNEAPOLIS (ChurchMilitant.com) - The head of the St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocese is requesting that his clerics refrain from voting in the presidential primary on Tuesday. Archbishop Bernard Hebda is urging priests and deacons of the archdiocese not to vote in Minnesota's "closed" primary on Super Tuesday, stating privacy concerns. "Minnesota's presidential primary is a 'closed' party nominating primary, meaning it is open only to people who align with the party," said Hebda in a e-mail to his clerics. "One has to attest that one agrees with...

Kamala Harris’s Catholic Problem It will come up again, should she be chosen as a running mate. “Perhaps the deepest and most troubling mystery of Kamala Harris’s tenure as a prosecutor centers on the disturbing issue of sexual abuse of children by priests,” writes Peter Schweizer in Profiles in Corruption. As a senator, Harris has been a loud critic of those who protect “predators” — a rich charge, given her woefully negligent record as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California, notes Schweizer: “During her decade-and-a-half tenure as a chief prosecutor, Harris would fail to prosecute a...

[Barf Alert] Archbishop tells Minnesota priests not to vote in primary Recommendation considers privacy, partisanship issues On the eve of Ash Wednesday, St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop Bernard Hebda wrote to his priests with a rather surprising suggestion for something to abstain from: voting in the state's upcoming primary on Super Tuesday. New for Lent: Daily reflections on food, faith and  climate from NCR's EarthBeat. Read now> The recommendation seems motivated by concerns about voter privacy in the state's new primary system and the appearance of partisanship if priests' party affiliation were to be made public. While canon lawyers told NCR the...

The Pope’s Slippery ‘Synodal’ Way His exhortation about the Amazon synod raises more questions than it answers. ypical of a Jesuit,” said Archbishop Bruno Forte in 2016, as he reflected on the deviously indirect style of Pope Francis. Forte, a close aide to Pope Francis, recalled that the pope didn’t want to spell out his support for Communion for the divorced and remarried in his exhortation Amoris Laetitia, lest it cause too much backlash. Forte quoted the pope saying, “If we speak explicitly about Communion for the divorced and remarried, you do not know what a terrible mess we will...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope to Fr. Martin: Upset Gays ‘Should Look for Another’ Parish In NYC talk, Jesuit gloats over meeting with pontiff, refuses to condemn homosexual acts Father James Martin, the leading propagandist for LGBT causes in the Church, met in late September with Pope Francis at the Vatican. The 30-minute meeting itself generated headlines and photos, but the content of the conversation between Martin and the pope was not revealed — until now.St. Paul, NYC, which hosts the dissident LGBT group "Out at St. Paul," endorsed by Fr. James Martin "He asked me not to go to the press, because...

The “Boss Like Ross” shoes aren’t “intended to be a political statement,” according to Reed. Rather, she wants the sneakers to help change people’s perspective and see things in a more positive light. “These shoes aren’t about knocking Nike or Kaepernick,” Reed told the DCNF. “It was a great idea by Nike, and I respect anyone who stands up for what they believe in. I believe in women. Women that are getting ‘Out of Line’ and paving their own path, just like Betsy Ross.” “…They were made to change people’s perspective,” Reed continued. “A perspective that is built around hate...

Vatican decides not to release names of bishops in Youth Synod small groups ROME, October 18, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — The organizers of the Youth Synod currently underway in Rome have decided not to release the names of members of the small language groups, the Vatican announced today. While some see the move as fostering greater freedom to speak in the synod hall, it is leading others to question the transparency of synod organizers. At a press briefing on Wednesday, Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Secretariat for Communications, told LifeSite that the names of small group members “will not be made public.” Ruffini said synod...

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s closed-door announcement of slipping amnesty for nearly 800,000 illegal aliens covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program into an end-of-the-year spending deal comes less than a month after a DACA recipient has been accused of murder. Ryan, according to members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), is planning to put together a spending deal that includes giving amnesty to the DACA illegal aliens, as Breitbart News reported. “He did talk about the fact that that would be good if we could get ahead of that as opposed to being reactionary,” RSC Chairman Mark Walker...

Add the National Republican Congressional Committee to the list of conservative groups capitalizing on former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina’s secret meetings with lobbyists at a Caribou Coffee near the White House. President Obama has repeatedly promised that his would be “the most transparent administration in history,” but the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report yesterday showing that high-ranking Obama staffers, including Messina, used private email addresses to bypass these rules and meet with industry lobbyists. “I will roll Pelosi to get the 4 billion,” Messina wrote Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America lobbyist Jeffrey...

Comedian Armando Iannucci got past security guards at the US State department in Washington with a pass which "could have been produced by a child", in what he described as "probably international espionage". Mr Iannucci was researching his latest film, the US-British political drama 'In the Loop', when he visited the department's headquarters in the Foggy Bottom neighbourhood of the US political capital. The identification he had with him was an amateurish BBC pass with his face show by a print out of a picture of him from the internet. He flashed the card at the guards in the main...

Dawn Sneaks: Old birds sing early, cuckold sleepyheads Susan Milius Among European birds called blue tits, the early bird gets more than a worm. Older males start singing some 5 or 6 minutes earlier in the dawn chorus and attract more of the promiscuous females than younger males do, researchers report in an upcoming issue of Animal Behaviour. SLY SONGS. Among blue tits, males' dawn chorus may be a networking system for encounters with wandering females. K. Delhey In Europe, the springtime dawn chorus includes the voices of male blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus), colorful little cousins of chickadees. Those males...