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Pope's "Change in Tone on Homosexuality and Cohabitation Remarkable"

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Photo Credit: Demotix / CorbisIs this the modern family according to Francis? From gay relationships to extramarital sex, from divorce and remarriage to civil unions, the Roman Catholic church has signaled it is ready to adopt what some see as a markedly more conciliatory tone towards those in “irregular” familial setups. . .

The [Pope’s synod] document, known as a relatio post disceptationem, received applause when it was read aloud in the synod hall after a week of discussions, due to continue this week. It does not contain any decisions but offers a significant idea of the gathering’s direction of travel. Some Vatican observers said its change in tone on homosexuality and cohabitation was remarkable.

“The document published today by the synod of bishops represents an earthquake, the ‘big one’ that hit after months of smaller tremors,” wrote John Thavis, author of The Vatican Diaries. “The document clearly reflects Pope Francis’s desire to adopt a more merciful pastoral approach on marriage and family issues.”

Referring to the increasing numbers of people choosing to live together before marriage, or to have civil weddings, the bishops spoke of the need to see “the constructive elements” in those options while not viewing them as an equal substitute for Christian marriage. “In such unions, it is possible to grasp authentic family values or at least the wish for them,” they noted. . .

“Often they wish to encounter a church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?”

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Pope Francis: The Devil Works to Divide Christians

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Photo Credit: APDivisions among Christians “hurt the Church and they wound Christ,” Pope Francis said to tens of thousands of visitors gathered in Saint Peter’s Square Wednesday morning.

During her journey through history, “the Church is tempted by the devil who tries to divide it,” the Pope said, and unfortunately, “she has been marred by serious and painful divisions.”

Francis devoted his “general audience” to the issue of the unity of Christians, urging his listeners to take an active part in healing the wounds that still separate them.

We must not forget, he said that “there are many brothers and sisters who share our faith in Christ, but who belong to other denominations or traditions different from our own.” He challenged his hearers not to accept these painful divisions, which in the course of history have “often been a cause of conflict and suffering, even wars.”

“Are we resigned, or even indifferent to this division? Or do we firmly believe that we can and must walk in the direction of reconciliation and full communion?” he asked.

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Pope Francis: Satan Seduces by Disguising Evil as Good

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Photo Credit: Daniel Ibáñez / CNA.On Monday’s feast of the archangels Pope Francis spoke of the ongoing battle between the devil and mankind, encouraging attendees to pray to the angels, who have been charged to defend us.

“He presents things as if they were good, but his intention is destruction. And the angels defend us,” the Roman Pontiff told those gathered for his Sept. 29 Mass in the Vatican’s Saint Martha residence chapel.

The Bishop of Rome began by pointing to the day’s readings taken from Daniel 7 in which the prophet has a vision of God the Father on a throne of fire giving Christ dominion over the world, and Revelation 12, which recounts the battle in which Satan, as a large dragon, is cast out of heaven by St. Michael.

Noting how these are strong images portraying “the great dragon, the ancient serpent” who “seduces all of inhabited earth,” the Pope also drew attention to Christ’s words to Nathanael in the day’s Gospel from John when he tells him “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”

All of these readings, he said, speak of “the struggle between God and the devil” which “takes place after Satan tries to destroy the woman who is about to give birth to a son.”

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ISIS Wants to Assassinate the Pope

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Photo Credit: APBy Nick Squires.

Pope Francis is at risk of an assassination attempt by the Islamic extremists of Isil, the Vatican has been warned, ahead of his first visit to a Muslim-majority country this weekend.

As the 77-year-old pontiff prepares to travel to Albania on Sunday for a one-day visit, Iraq’s ambassador to the Holy See said there were credible threats against the pontiff’s life.

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church could also be vulnerable when he travels to Turkey in November, the ambassador said.

Jihadists from Isil have in recent weeks boasted of wanting to extend their caliphate to Rome, the heart of Western Christendom, and have talked of planting the jihadist black flag on top of St Peter’s Basilica.

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Islamic State shoots down Syrian war plane

By Reuters.

Islamic State fighters shot down a Syrian war plane using anti-aircraft guns on Tuesday, the first time the group has downed a military jet since declaring its cross-border caliphate in June, a group monitoring the civil war said.

The plane came down outside Islamic State’s stronghold of Raqqa city, 400 km (250 miles) northeast of Damascus, during air strikes on territory controlled by the group, a resident said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group which gathers information from a network of activists on the ground, reported five air raids on Raqqa on Tuesday. Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the organization, cited sources close to Islamic State as saying the plane had been shot down.

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Pope Says World's Many Conflicts Amount to Piecemeal World War III

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Photo Credit: ALESSANDRO DI Pope Francis said on Saturday the spate of conflicts around the globe today were effectively a “piecemeal” Third World War, condemning the arms trade and “plotters of terrorism” sowing death and destruction.

“Humanity needs to weep and this is the time to weep,” Francis said in the homily of a Mass during a visit to Italy’s largest war memorial, a large, Fascist-era monument where more than 100,000 soldiers who died in World War One are buried.

The pope began his brief visit to northern Italy by first praying in a nearby, separate cemetery for some 15,000 soldiers from five nations of the Austro-Hungarian empire which were on the losing side of the Great War that broke out 100 years ago.

“War is madness,” he said in his homily before the massive, sloping granite memorial, made of 22 steps on the side of hill with three crosses at the top.

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Following Pope Visit to Security Fence, Netanyahu Highlights Pre-Wall Terror Deaths (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube ScreenshotA day after Pope Francis was pictured praying at Israel’s security barrier on Sunday beneath a slogan that compared Palestinians with Jews under the Nazis, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu explained to him in no uncertain terms why the wall was erected in the first place.

At a Jerusalem memorial for terror victims, Netanyahu told the pope, “When my son was ten years old, his best friend was a girl, a beautiful Ethiopian girl, who sat next to him in class. One day she didn’t come. She was blown up in a bus not far from here because there was no fence, no wall.”

After the pope responded with prayers for peace and a harsh condemnation of terrorism, Netanyahu elaborated further.

“I’m grateful for your words today. Israel wants peace. Here we have a hospital, Hadassah Hospital. Palestinians come to this hospital. With the wall, they come. We cannot go to their hospitals, they come to our hospitals,” he said. “We don’t teach our children to plant bombs. We teach them peace. But we have to build a wall against those who teach the other side. But it cannot prevent the incitement to hate and terror and the destruction of Israel that permeates so much of the society on the other side of the fence. If that changes, then the walls could come down and we will have peace.”

The pope’s unscheduled visit to the security barrier on Sunday drew harsh criticism, especially as a result of the imagery that emerged from the trip showing the pope in the same frame as graffiti that read, “Bethlehem look like Warsaw Ghetto.”

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Pope Francis says He Would Baptize Aliens: ‘Who are We to Close Doors?’

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Pope Francis has said that he would be willing to baptize aliens if they came to the Vatican, asking “who are we to close doors” to anyone – even Martians.

In a homily yesterday dedicated to the concepts of acceptance and inclusion, Francis recalled a Bible story about the conversion of the first pagans to Christianity, according to reports on Vatican Radio.

He said Catholicism was a church of “open doors”, and that it was up to Christians to accept the Holy Spirit however “unthinkable” and “unimaginable” it appeared.

Describing how, according to the Bible, Peter was criticized by the Christians of Jerusalem for making contact with a community of “unclean” pagans, Francis said that at the time that too was “unthinkable”.

“If, for example, tomorrow an expedition of Martians came to us here and one said ‘I want to be baptised!’, what would happen?”

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Pope Francis: ‘The Image of God is the Married Couple: The Man and the Woman’

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Photo Credit: AP / Gabriel Bouys

Photo Credit: AP / Gabriel Bouys

Although the national gay magazine The Advocate named Pope Francis its “Person of the Year” in December 2013, the Pope repeated on Apr. 2 the Catholic Church’s teaching that marriage is reserved for one man and one woman, adding that this is part of “God’s design” and that “the image of God is the married couple: the man and the woman ….”

During his General Audience speech at St. Peter’s Square on Apr. 2, before a crowd estimated at 45,000, Pope Francis first cited Genesis, saying, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them. … Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

“The image of God is the married couple: the man and the woman; not only the man, not only the woman, but both of them together,” said the Pope. “God’s covenant with us is represented in that covenant between man and woman. And this is very beautiful.”

“When a man and a woman celebrate the Sacrament of Matrimony, God as it were ‘is mirrored’ in them; He impresses in them his own features and the indelible character of his love,” said Pope Francis. “Marriage is the icon of God’s love for us.”

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Obama Seeks Pope’s Blessing

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Photo Credit: AFP / Saul Loeb

Photo Credit: AFP / Saul Loeb

Barack Obama will meet Pope Francis for the first time Thursday for talks on a shared agenda to fight inequality which the US President hopes will help boost support at home.

The talks between the first Latin-American pope and first African-American US president will focus on tackling the gap between the rich and the poor, but are likely to spill over into thornier issues such as abortion, homosexuals and contraception.

The meeting at the Vatican comes as a welcome rest-stop for Obama during a six-day European tour dominated by the crisis over Crimea, and the US leader will doubtless be hoping some of the pope’s overwhelming popularity will rub off on him.

Obama will also meet new Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi and the country’s president Giorgio Napolitano during his visit to the eternal city, as well as going on a private guided tour of the Colosseum.

Diplomatic relations between Italy and the United States are close, though Rome still needs some convincing on the value of imposing sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis, amid fears it would take a toll on a key market.

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Pope Warns Mobsters: Hell Awaits

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Photo Credit: AP / Andrew MedichiniPope Francis has a warning for Italy’s mobsters: They will go to hell if they don’t repent and renounce their “blood-stained money and blood-stained power.”

The pontiff on Friday delivered his most forceful denunciation yet of organized crime. The occasion was a prayer vigil at a Roman church for relatives of innocents killed by the mafia, during which the names of 842 victims were read aloud as a somber Francis looked on.

After voicing his solidarity with the family members, Francis said he couldn’t leave the service without speaking to those not present: the “protagonists” of mafia violence.

Addressing these absentee mafiosi, Francis was unsparing:

“This life that you live now won’t give you pleasure. It won’t give you joy or happiness,” he said. “Blood-stained money, blood-stained power, you can’t bring it with you to your next life. Repent. There’s still time to not end up in hell, which is what awaits you if you continue on this path.”

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