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WATCH: Pope Francis Slaps Away the Hand of Woman at Nativity Display

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Pope Francis slapped away the hand of an overly-excited woman during a Nativity display in St. Peter’s Square on New Year’s Eve.

The Pope made a visit Tuesday to the Nativity scene in Rome just outside of Vatican City, according to CBS News. One over zealous woman grabbed Pope Francis’ hand and tried to pull him towards her. The 83-year-old appeared to scold the woman and then slapped her hand until she released him.

(Read more from “WATCH: Pope Francis Slaps Away the Hand of Woman at Nativity Display” HERE)

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Pope Francis Compares Trump to Herod, Who Tried to Kill Jesus

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Pope Francis has compared U.S. President Donald Trump to the murderous King Herod who massacred innocent children in ancient Palestine while trying to kill the baby Jesus, a Jesuit journal revealed Thursday.

Speaking with his brother Jesuits during his recent visit to Thailand, the Argentinian pope minced no words in his thinly veiled condemnation of the U.S. president and his administration, suggesting that like a modern-day Herod, Mr. Trump separates families at the border while allowing drugs to freely flow into the country.

“In other parts there are walls that even separate children from parents. Herod comes to mind,” Francis said. “Yet for drugs, there’s no wall to keep them out.”

“The phenomenon of migration is compounded by war, hunger and a ‘defensive mindset,’ which makes us in a state of fear believe that you can defend yourself only by strengthening borders. At the same time, there is exploitation.”

In this Q&A session, the pontiff also proposed that the rise of populism is at the root of migrants’ problems in Europe. (Read more from “Pope Francis Compares Trump to Herod, Who Tried to Kill Jesus” HERE)

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Pope Francis Leads Holy Mass in Rome a Day After Italian Friend Accused Him of ‘Denying the Physical Resurrection of Christ’

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Pope Francis led prayers at Holy Mass in Rome today after an Italian journalist claimed the Pope told him he does not believe Jesus Christ was resurrected as a body, but in the ‘semblance of a spirit’.

Eugenio Scalfari, 95, a frequent papal interviewer, said his long-term friend Pope Francis does not believe a key Catholic doctrine that Jesus returned in the flesh after his crucifixion.

Though the claims were disputed by the Vatican and believers, they were not flat-out denied by the Holy See – leading some to criticise it for what has been deemed as an ineffectual response on a heretical matter. . .

According to Scalfari, Pope Francis said, ‘He [Jesus] was a man until he was put in the sepulchre by the women who restored his corpse.

‘That night in the sepulchre the man disappeared and from that cave came out in the form of a spirit that met the women and the Apostles, still preserving the shadow of the person, and then definitively disappeared.’ (Read more from “Pope Francis Leads Holy Mass in Rome a Day After Italian Friend Accused Him of ‘Denying the Physical Resurrection of Christ'” HERE)

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Report Claims Pope Francis Said Jesus Was Not God

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Controversy erupted this week when atheist Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari published a serious charge in an article for the center-left outlet La Repubblica — namely, that Pope Francis previously told him in a private interview that Jesus Christ was not God. If true, this would be a blatant statement of heresy that denies the Nicene Creed and the Catechism.

According to Catholic News Agency, Scalfari, who has interviewed the pope on several occasions, said he discussed the topic of Jesus’ divinity sometime in the past. He allegedly challenged Pope Francis about church teaching by noting several scriptures of Christ expressing agony, which apparently led Scalfari to believe that Jesus was not divine. In response, Pope Francis allegedly told him, “They are the definitive proof that Jesus of Nazareth, once he became a man, even if he was a man of exceptional virtue, was not a God.”

Immediately after the article went public, the Vatican issued a rather tepid statement denying Scalfari’s claims, saying it was not a “faithful account” of what Pope Francis said.

“As already stated on other occasions, the words that Dr. Eugenio Scalfari attributes in quotation marks to the Holy Father during talks with him cannot be considered a faithful account of what was actually said but represent a personal and free interpretation of what he heard, as appears completely evident from what is written today regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ,” Matteo Bruni, the director of the Holy See’s press office, said in a statement.

After significant backlash over the wording in Bruni’s denial, Dr. Paolo Ruffini, the Vatican’s prefect of the dicastery for communications, effectively called Scalfari a liar and affirmed that Pope Francis believes in rudimentary Catholic teaching about the divinity of Jesus. (Read more from “Report Claims Pope Francis Said Jesus Was Not God” HERE)

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Vatican Cops Bust Drug-Fueled Gay Orgy at Home of Cardinal’s Aide

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Vatican police raided a drug-fueled gay-sex party at an apartment belonging to an aide of one of Pope Francis’ key advisers, according to a new report.

The Holy Father is “enraged,” since the home, inhabited by Francesco Cardinal Coccopalmerio’s secretary, belongs to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith — the arm charged with tackling clerical sex abuse, the Italian paper Il Fatto Quotidiano reported.

Cops raided the apartment in late June after neighbors voiced concern about multiple people acting strangely while streaming in and out of the residence, the newspaper reported Wednesday.

Once police were inside the apartment, they said they found multiple men engaged in rampant drug use and homosexual activity. . .

Coccopalmerio had recommended the secretary for a promotion to bishop — but his prospects aren’t looking good following this incident and two previous alleged drug overdoses, according to an International Business Times report. (Read more from “Vatican Cops Bust Drug-Fueled Gay Orgy at Home of Cardinal’s Aide” HERE)

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Vatican Whistleblower Claims Rector of Washington, D.C. Basilica Is a Member of the ‘Gay Mafia’

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Vatican whistleblower Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò claimed over the weekend that while he was the papal nuncio to the United States, he saw “documentation” alleging that the rector of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., sexually molested male students at the Catholic University of America.

“Monsignor [Walter] Rossi is, without a doubt, a member of the ‘gay mafia,'” Viganò told Italian journalist Marco Tosatti on Saturday, bolstering George Neumayr’s hair-raising reportage on the “Gay Mafioso” in the American Spectator. The former nuncio said the fact that Rossi’s name was once proposed for a promotion to bishop “shows how the ‘gay mafia’ operates. ”

Viganò went into hiding last August, in fear for his life, after accusing Pope Francis of covering up sexual misconduct in an eleven-page bombshell letter. Almost a year later, much of his powerful testimony has been vindicated. . .

In a series of emails with the Post, he accused Pope Francis of lying in denying knowledge of the sexual abuse allegations against now-defrocked cardinal Theodore McCarrick and said Francis, as well as his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, must come clean about what they knew about the alleged abuse.

Viganò said it was “immensely sad” that Francis was “blatantly lying to the whole world to cover up his wicked deeds.” He also reiterated his claim that a “corrupt gay mafia” is running the Church. (Read more from “Vatican Whistleblower Claims Rector of Washington, D.C. Basilica Is a Member of the ‘Gay Mafia'” HERE)

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Pope Francis Approves Change to Lord’s Prayer

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Pope Francis finally approved the changes he has long wanted to implement to the Lord’s Prayer by replacing “lead us not into temptation” with “do not let us fall into temptation,” reports UCatholic.

“On May 22nd during the General Assembly of the Episcopal Conference of Italy, President Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti announced the approval of a third edition of the Messale Romano,” reports the outlet. The revised translation will include changes to the Lord’s Prayer and Gloria. The Lord’s Prayer will change from ‘and lead us not into temptation’ to ‘do not let us fall into temptation.'”

Pope Francis first spoke of his desire to update the “lead us not into temptation” part of the Lord’s Prayer, arguing that it portrays God in a false light. “A father does not lead into temptation, a father helps you to get up immediately,” the Pope said at the time. . .

Pope Francis also asserted that other translations had already been changed to correct mistakes and to modernize the language. “The French have modified the prayer to ‘do not let me fall into temptation,’ because it is me who falls, not the Lord who tempts me to then see how I fall,” he said.

According to the U.K.’s Express, the change to the Lord’s Prayer comes after 16 years of research by experts who found a mistake in the current translation “from a theological, pastoral, and stylistic viewpoint.” It has been translated into literally hundreds of languages from the original texts in ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. (Read more from “Pope Francis Approves Change to Lord’s Prayer” HERE)

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Pope Francis Breaks Silence on Recent Abuse Scandal

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After nearly a yearlong silence, Pope Francis has officially addressed allegations that he knew about the sexually abusive Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and lifted sanctions that were imposed on him by Pope Benedict XVI.

In an 11-page letter released in August of last year, Archbishop Viganò, former Nuncio from the Vatican to Washington, D.C., alleged that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had been sanctioned under Pope Benedict XVI only to have those sanctions removed by Pope Francis upon his ascendancy in 2013. Cardinal McCarrick had an alleged history of sexually abusing male seminarians and, according to Viganò, was ordered by Pope Benedict to refrain from saying Mass or public ministry.

Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume, the former first counsellor at the apostolic nunciature in Washington, D.C., said flatly that Viganò “said the truth” in his letter, which was followed by several other high-ranking prelates testifying to Viganó’s respectable character.

Shortly after the letter dropped, Pope Francis elected to remain silent and maintained that protocol until this past Tuesday when he told Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki that he “knew nothing” about Cardinal McCarrick’s behavior and did not remember if Archbishop Viganò ever informed him about the sanctions.

“I have said it many times, I knew nothing, no idea,” he said. “And when this guy (Vigano) said that he told me about it that day, that he came … I don’t remember if he told me about this. If it’s true or not. No idea!” (Read more from “Pope Francis Breaks Silence on Recent Abuse Scandal” HERE)

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Pope Francis Rejects Resignation of Cardinal Convicted of Abuse Cover-Up

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The Vatican announced Tuesday that Pope Francis had rejected the resignation of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin from his post as archbishop of Lyon, after a French court convicted Barbarin of failing to report an abusive priest.

“I can confirm that the Holy Father has not accepted the resignation tendered by Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon,” said the interim director of the Holy See Press Office, Alessandro Gisotti. . .

On March 7, a French court found Barbarin guilty of having failed to report Father Bernard Preynat, a priest who was accused by numerous victims of having carried out dozens of acts of sexual abuse of minors in boy scout camps between 1986 and 1991. The priest has confessed to some of these crimes to police.

The court delivered the prelate a suspended sentence of six months in prison. Named archbishop of Lyon in 2002, Barbarin is the first high-ranking Catholic prelate to be convicted of covering up clerical sex abuse and endangering minors. . .

The cardinal said he would remain in Lyon pending his appeal, but added that he would step back from his job “for a little while,” allowing his vicar general, Father Yves Baumgarten, to take over the running of the diocese during that time. (Read more from “Pope Francis Rejects Resignation of Cardinal Convicted of Abuse Cover-Up” HERE)

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Bishop Accused of Sexual Abuse Invited to Private Retreat With Pope Francis

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An Argentinean bishop and personal friend of Pope Francis who suddenly resigned and fled his diocese after being accused of the sexual abuse of seminarians and who now holds a high-ranking post in the Vatican, is currently participating in a private spiritual retreat with Pope Francis and other senior Vatican officials, according to an article published today in the Catholic Herald.

The Herald reports that Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, who is the former bishop of Orán, Argentina, is attending the exclusive retreat, which is being conducted for the Pope and 64 members of the Roman Curia by a Benedictine abbot at a retreat center outside of Rome. The retreat began yesterday and is scheduled to last until March 15.

The inclusion of Zanchetta in the retreat follows reports that Vatican officials, apparently including Pope Francis himself, have been aware since 2015 of well-substantiated accusations against Zanchetta of inappropriate conduct with male seminarians, as well as other forms of personal misbehavior on the part of the bishop, including his sharing naked selfies on Whatsapp showing the bishop in a posture of self-abuse.

Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti has denied it was informed of the accusations in 2015, but admits that it has known of them since autumn of last year, when it says an internal investigation was begun of Zanchetta.

In addition, prosecutors in Argentina say they have opened two criminal investigations based on accusations of sexual abuse filed against Zanchetta in the province of Salta, where Zanchetta was a bishop. (Read more from “Bishop Accused of Sexual Abuse Invited to Private Retreat With Pope Francis” HERE)

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