For Europe’s top leaders, travel details have not been confirmed ahead of what could be a momentous visit to Kyiv. But Ukrainian President Zelensky also had some frank words for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
Tag: pope francis
Italy’s right-wing politicians are trying to ban surrogacy, as the pope pushes parents to have children and feminists are divided on the issue. On such a complicated issue, hard thinking and nuance have been in short supply.
The Pope is being urged to “go to Kyiv,” and name Putin as the aggressor in the war in Ukraine. If he did so, the pontiff would renounce his own religious charisma, and ultimately sap him of his unique role and power as the ultimate messenger of peace.
Patriarch Kirill I has offered Putin a religious justification for his invasion of Ukraine, while Pope Francis stands firmly with the Ukrainian people. The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church is a close ally of Putin’s, and has surprising links to the KGB.
? Mhoroi!* Welcome to Friday, where world leaders meet in Rome for the G20 (before meeting again in Glasgow for the COP26 on Sunday), Facebook rebrands itself as Meta and following Texas’ recent near-total ban on abortion, we also look at the mixed landscape of abortion rights across the globe. Then we unpack the Japanese […]
Italy is once again murmuring about how Pope Francis was in therapy while serving as a priest in Argentina. It’s just another sign of Italians’ tendency to live in denial about hard questions around mental health.
The Church and the Army are classic settings where hierarchies help commanders accumulate power. And then, what do they do with it?
El Espectador, Sep. 6, 2017 Pope Francis begins a five-day visit Wednesday in Colombia, as the country looks to move beyond decades of armed conflict between leftist rebels and the government.
Pope Francis is not afraid of speaking freely, with his sermons and writings — and a fair share of press interviews — stirring up the Catholic establishment since his election in 2013. Yet a new book based on transcripts of 12 separate conversations with a French sociologist is particularly rich in revelations. The 432-page Politique […]
Francis has traveled the world and proven himself to be an able messenger of peace. But so far, he’s avoided his home country, where his unifying spirit is sorely needed.
After a chilly first encounter, President Mauricio Macri and Pope Francis, both from Argentina but from different ends of the ideological spectrum, are set to meet again.
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Black Lives Matter, From Baltimore To Brazil
Ever since the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore last year, the Black Lives Matter movement has been growing exponentially, both in citizen participation and in media attention. The Black Lives Matter cause was even exported abroad, with similar protests in Paris, Rio de Janeiro and other cities around the globe. Right now, much of […]
ДеÑÑ‚, Sept. 5 She had been dubbed “the saint of the gutters,” she will now be remembered as “Saint Teresa of Calcutta” after Pope Francis canonized the Catholic nun at a ceremony Sunday in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, had devoted her life to helping the poor in […]
-OpEd- BERLIN — The ministers of the interior of Germany’s 16 federal states have presented their plan against terrorism. Among them, the abolition of the dual citizenship and a public ban on wearing the burqa. As far as is known, no dual citizenship holder has committed a crime of a terrorist nature. The number of […]
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Lost In Brazil, Dilma Can Wait
SPOTLIGHT: LOST IN BRAZIL, DILMA CAN WAIT Brazil has won its first gold medal in Rio (courtesy of judoka Rafaela Silva), and other national athletes — especially soccer players after the 2014 World Cup fiasco — will obviously be looking to add to that tally. But one area where the hosts certainly won’t be claiming […]
The recent visit by Pope Francis highlighted how little Polish leaders care about the emergency of Europe’s refugee crisis.
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Pope Francis: No Fear Of Islam In Europe
La Croix, May 17, 2016 VATICAN CITY — In a rare interview, Pope Francis told French Catholic daily La Croix that there is no “fear of Islam” in Europe, and that the freedom to practice religion must be protected “not outside, but inside society.” The wide-ranging interview, published Tuesday, covered the Pope’s views on the […]
Gay marriage separates the two major Christian communities that dominate Germany. But what does the Bible really say about homosexuality?
TUCUMÁN — Pope Francis declared war on waste months ago. Now, three of his kinsmen in northern Argentina have developed an idea to keep perfectly good food from being tossed and to help the hungry at the same time: “social fridges” where people can leave “neat portions” of leftover food. The initiative was launched in […]
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Lonely Dilma, Hijackass, Pope’s Fiat
MYANMAR PRESIDENT SWORN-IN Htin Kyaw has been sworn in as Myanmar’s first elected civilian president in more than 50 years. In his first address as president, the 69-year-old, a close aide to Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, promised “national reconciliation” and a new Constitution guaranteeing a federal democracy and “the lifting up […]
The renewed relations with the U.S. may have been prompted by the Cuban revolutionaries’ connection with Pope Francis.
POLICE RAIDS NAB BRUSSELS, PARIS SUSPECTS Brussels police launched a series of raids overnight after Tuesday’s deadly terror attacks, detaining at least six people — three of them in a vehicle right outside the prosecutor’s office, Belgian broadcaster RTBF reported. Two people were taken into custody in Brussels’ Jette neighborhood, and another was detained in […]
A combination of political differences, bungling of protocol and lack of sensitivity seem to have further gnarled relations between Argentine President Mauricio Macri and fellow countryman Pope Francis.
ISIS TARGETS SYRIA’S MUSLIM MINORITIES Despite losing ground across much of Syria, ISIS remains a dangerous threat in the western part of the country under the Syrian government’s control. A series of explosions in the cities of Homs and in the capital Damascus yesterday killed at least 140 people and wounded dozens more. ISIS claimed […]
PRE-CEASEFIRE, SYRIA FIGHTING ESCALATES Fighting has intensified in Syria just days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov announced that an agreed ceasefire would begin by the end of this week. According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital 70 […]
HOW FAR CAN SYRIAN TRUCE REACH? Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, announced this morning that they had agreed on the rapid delivery of desperately needed aid to besieged Syrian cities. Talking to reporters in Munich, the two top diplomats expanded on yesterday’s announcement of what amounts to an extremely […]
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Mexico Says Bienvenido! To Pope Francis
La Prensa, Feb. 12, 2016 “Welcome!” reads Friday’s front page of Mexico City-based daily La Prensa, greeting Pope Francis as he’s set for an afternoon arrival in Mexico for his first visit as pontiff. Ahead of his five-day trip, which includes a visit to a prison in the crime-riddled city of Ciudad Juarez, the Pope […]
Italian museum officials covered up prized ancient statues for the visit of Iranian President Rouhani. But what do we lose with such overly eager attention to Muslim sensibilities? And what about our own?
OREGON MILITIA MEMBER KILLED AMID ARRESTS Photo: Mike Albright/ZUMA Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, an Arizona rancher and one of the leaders of the armed militia that had been occupying a federal wildlife reserve in eastern Oregon since Jan. 2, was killed in a shootout with federal officers Tuesday, The New York Times reports. The militia leader […]
L’Osservatore Romano, Jan. 27, 2016 The meeting of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani with Pope Francis was featured on Wednesday’s Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, with the front-page headline: “A Political Solution For The Middle East.” At the 40-minute meeting at the Vatican, the first visit between a pope and Iranian president since 1999, Francis and Rouhani […]
In Italy, between 5,000 and 7,000 priests have given up their robes. Some ex-priests re-enter lay society with a female companion, others struggle to build a new life from scratch.
The most friendly of pontiffs, Argentine-born Pope Francis has yet to speak to just-elected President Mauricio Macri. Maybe a rude remark by one of Macri’s aides is to blame.
Muslims are supposed to save water, Christians and Jews energy. In the past, we blamed those ideologies for ecological crises.
COP21 SUMMIT BEGINS Photo: 1heart1tree via Instagram French President François Hollande arrived this morning at Le Bourget airport to welcome nearly 150 world leaders, who have traveled to Paris for the much-anticipated global climate conference dubbed COP21. No summit in history has brought together this many heads of state in the interest of reaching meaningful […]
HOLLANDE MEETS PUTIN IN MOSCOW French President François Hollande is set to meet Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin later today in Moscow in the hopes of forming an international military coalition against ISIS. Hollande has been engaged in a diplomatic blitz this week, having met with British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.S. President Barack Obama, German […]
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Pope Kicks Off First Trip To Africa In Kenya
Thousands of people braved heavy rain on Thursday to take part in Pope Francis’ open-air mass at a university campus in Kenya’s capital on the pontiff’s first visit to Africa. The front page of Nairobi-based daily The Star, featured the pope’s arrival on Wednesday, where he was welcomed by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta. In his […]
The pontiff’s visit to Tuscany brings him to the historic textile town of Prato, where Chinese workers have flocked to toil in what are often very inhuman circumstances. These are the faithful Francis wishes to see.
U.S., RUSSIA REACH DEAL ON SYRIA CAMPAIGNS Washington and Moscow officials signed an agreement yesterday to regulate flights over Syria in a bid to avoid potential clashes in the skies between U.S. and Russian aircraft as the rival countries engage in separate operations against jihadists, The New York Times reports. But the deal doesn’t include […]