The Vatican uncovered the stairs that Jesus walked to face Pontius Pilate’s judgement, revealing the bare marble for the first time in 300 years.
Pope Innocent XIII ordered that the Holy Stairs, or Scala Sancta, be covered with walnut planks in 1723 to protect the marble, but Vatican caretakers removed the planks for a two-month renovation project, allowing visitors to walk in what Christians believe to be the footsteps of Christ.
Tradition holds that Jesus ascended and descended the 28 steps several times to face the judgement of Roman governor Pontius Pilate before his crucifixion, staining them with his blood. . .
Crosses mark three spots where Jesus’ blood is said to have fallen on the steps when he returned to Pilate after authorities flogged him. Christian faithful ascend the steps, often on their knees, and pause to kiss these spots. . .
The steps lead to a room called the Holy of Holies, which once served as a private chapel for popes. An icon of Jesus dating back to the fifth century and several relics of church saints lie within. (Read more from “Vatican Unveils Stairs That Jesus Walked to Face Pilate’s Judgement for First Time in 300 Years” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/1024px-St_Peters_Square_Vatican_City_-_April_2007-1.jpg5751023Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2019-04-19 15:59:332019-04-19 15:58:04Vatican Unveils Stairs That Jesus Walked to Face Pilate’s Judgement for First Time in 300 Years
On Monday, Catholic News Agency reported that the Vatican has cancelled the US bishops’ vote on reform measures that were intended to address the clergy sex abuse crisis.
The article from CNA states that according to Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), American bishops will not be permitted to vote on two important proposals set before them. The proposals had been expected to lay the foundation for the Church’s response to widespread accusations of sexual abuse from around the country. . .
The bishops had been considering–and planning to vote upon–both a new code of conduct for bishops, and the establishment of a body of lay-led people to investigate bishops accused of sexual misconduct.
But now the Vatican has decided that the discussion and vote will, at the very least, be delayed–supposedly until after Pope Francis has held a special meeting in Rome slated for February. The meeting, according to the Vatican, will include bishops’ conference presidents from all over the world, and will allegedly address the sexual abuse crisis from a global perspective.
Prior to the US bishops’ assembly in Baltimore, two documents had been circulating. One of them was a draft for a new Standards of Conduct for bishops, and the other was a proposal to form a special lay “investigative commission” intended to look into claims of abuse against bishops. (Read more from “Vatican Halts U.S. Bishop Attempts to Address Sex Abuse Scandal” HERE)
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A Kansas elementary school says it had no idea that a former Catholic cardinal alleged to have abused several young men over the course of several decades was placed in a rectory just next door, KansasCity.com reports.
Theodore McCarrick resigned as a cardinal back in July after a review board discovered credible claims of sexual abuse dating back nearly 50 years. McCarrick is alleged to have abused at least one minor and three adults, all seminarians or young priests, under McCarricks tutelage. His youngest victim was reportedly 11 years old.
The Vatican announced Friday that McCarrick had been “relocated” to Victoria, Kansas, where he is expected to live out the rest of his days in prayer and penance, unless Catholic Church officials deem it necessary that McCarrick face further sanctions. . .
Victoria Elementary only found out that McCarrick was living nearby at the St. Fidelis friary when parents mentioned the issue on social media, despite the fact that McCarrick is credibly accused of assaulting a minor.
Bishop Gerald L. Vincke of the Diocese of Salina, who reportedly worked with the Vatican to secure McCarrick’s living arrangements, says McCarrick is not allowed to leave the friary or make public appearances. (Read more from “Vatican Places a Sex Abuser in a Home Near Elementary School” HERE)
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Before his death in 2016, the Vatican’s chief exorcist for over a quarter century, Father Gabriele Amorth, observed, “The Devil resides in the Vatican, and you can see the consequences.” We are seeing the consequences now from Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. all the way up to the College of Cardinals. Fr. Amorth described “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus and bishops who are linked to the demon.” The Pennsylvania grand jury report relates one instance of ritualized, satanic abuse of a young boy by four priests. There is some ambiguity regarding the precise nature of the incident owing to page-long redactions in the report. Another priest rinsed out the mouth of a nine-year-old boy he had sodomized with holy water. Yet another priest sodomized yet another boy with a seven-inch-long crucifix. . .
[T]he incidents outlined in the Pennsylvania grand jury report seem so particularly wicked: the scheming, the grooming, the perversion, the hypocrisy — above all, the eerily spiritual character of the abuse, the ritualized sexual sacrilege, the “spiritual wickedness in high places.” It isn’t merely the acts themselves that horrify but also the evil that prompted and sustained them.
Last year, an American couple, Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, quit their jobs to ride their bicycles around Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. During their journey, Austin declared on his blog, “Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own.” Last month, Muslim terrorists murdered the couple as they bicycled through Tajikistan, ramming them with their sedan and stabbing them until they died.
Evil is not a make-believe concept. Neither is it mere metaphor for disordered sexual desires or feckless bureaucratic management. Evil exists, and it has a personality. Secular, self-styled sophisticates often deny the existence of the Devil. But as the late Antonin Scalia reminded a flippant New York Magazine interviewer in 2013, “Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.” The particular evil of the present moment is a call to arms against the Devil, not the Church. Of course the Devil resides in the Vatican. Where else should he concentrate his efforts? The Devil exists. He is a murderer and a liar, and he is crouching at your door. Any reform that denies that reality will not only fail but will let evil fester. (Read more from “The Devil Resides in the Vatican: Ritualistic Satanic Sex Abuse Rampant” HERE)
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Theologians, Lay Leaders Call for ‘Collective Resignation’ of U.S. Bishops
By Thomas Williams. More than 700 educators and Catholic lay leaders have written an open letter urging the United States bishops to tender their collective resignation to Pope Francis in the wake of a string of scandals related to clerical sex abuse.
The letter references a recent Pennsylvania grand jury report that alleges not only clerical sexual abuse but also “systematic cover-ups by bishops and others in positions of power.”
The report came hard on the heels of “revelations of decades of sexual predation by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and in the long shadow of the sexual abuse crisis in Boston and beyond,” the letter states.
The centerpiece of the open letter is the following line: “Today, we call on the Catholic Bishops of the United States to prayerfully and genuinely consider submitting to Pope Francis their collective resignation as a public act of repentance and lamentation before God and God’s People.”
In May, the bishops of Chile resigned en masse following a three-day meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican to discuss the sex abuse crisis that had shaken the church in that country. (Read more from Satanic sex abuse in the church HERE).
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Wisconsin Bishop Decries ‘Homosexual Subculture Within the Hierarchy of the Catholic Church’
By Thomas Williams. “It is time to admit that there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord,” writes Madison Bishop Robert C. Morlino on Saturday in a sharply worded letter to the faithful.
“For too long we have diminished the reality of sin — we have refused to call a sin a sin — and we have excused sin in the name of a mistaken notion of mercy,” the bishop writes in the Catholic Herald.
To be clear, in the specific situations at hand, “we are talking about deviant sexual — almost exclusively homosexual — acts by clerics,” he states, referring to a recent report from a Pennsylvania grand jury as well as scandals involving a Honduran seminary, Chilean clergy and bishops, and a prominent U.S. cardinal.
We’re also talking about homosexual propositions and abuses against seminarians and young priests by powerful priests, bishops, and cardinals,” Bishop Morlino writes. “We are talking about acts and actions which are not only in violation of the sacred promises made by some, in short, sacrilege, but also are in violation of the natural moral law for all.”
“To call it anything else would be deceitful and would only ignore the problem further,” he writes. (Read more about Satanic sex abuse in the church HERE)
A veteran Vatican watcher noted a “day of irony in Rome” this week as the Holy See conducted a conference on protecting children from internet-based sexual abuse while simultaneously harboring inside its walls a Vatican diplomat wanted by police for possessing child porn.
“This is not to pre-judge the guilt or innocence of anyone,” Dr. Robert Moynihan wrote in an October 3 letter to his subscribers. “It is merely to note the irony of Church sponsorship for a conference on global child pornography while charges of breaking child pornography laws are outstanding against a monsignor who works for the Vatican and who is enjoying immunity due to his diplomatic status and living in the Vatican.”
Moynihan, founder and editor-in-chief of Inside the Vatican magazine, began his newsletter quoting part of the opening address from Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, Tuesday at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome for the conference, “Child Dignity in the Digital World.”
The event is being held October 3-6 and was organized by the Gregorian University’s Center for Child Protection. (Read more from “Vatican Hosts Conference on Child Abuse While Shielding Priest Wanted for Child Porn” HERE)
By Megan Cerullo. Vatican police raided a drug-fueled gay sex party at a top priest’s apartment near the city, according to an Italian newspaper report.
The apartment’s occupant, who was not named by police, serves as a secretary to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, a personal adviser to Pope Francis.
The apartment belongs to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith — the branch that reviews appeals from clergy found guilty of sexual abuse of minors, according to Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, which first published the explosive report.
Police raided the apartment in June after neighbors complained of unusual behavior among frequent nighttime visitors.
Police arrested the priest and hospitalized him to detox him from the drugs he had ingested, according to the newspaper. (Read more from “Vatican Police Raid Drug-Fueled Gay Orgy at Top Priest’s Apartment” HERE)
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Vatican Police ‘Break up Drug-Fuelled Gay Orgy at Home of Secretary of One of Pope Francis’s Key Advisers’
By Julian Robinson. Vatican police have broken up a gay orgy at the home of the secretary to one of Pope Francis’s key advisers, it has been reported.
The flat belonged to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is in charge of tackling clerical sexual abuse.
When police showed up, they found drugs and a group of men engaged in sexual activity, local reports state.
Reports in Italy claim the occupant of the apartment is allegedly the secretary to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio – a key aide to the 80-year-old Pope . . .
It is the latest scandal to hit the Vatican and comes after its finance chief Cardinal George Pell was charged with historical sexual offences. (Read more from “Vatican Police ‘Break up Drug-Fuelled Gay Orgy at Home of Secretary of One of Pope Francis’s Key Advisers'” HERE)
A cardinal in charge of the Vatican’s finances has been charged with multiple sexual offenses by Australian police, in one of the most significant indictments against a top-ranking leader of the Catholic Church.
Cardinal George Pell faces multiple charges of “historical sexual assault offenses,” the Australian criminal justice system’s term for offenses committed in the past, Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton announced at a news conference on Thursday morning in Australia . . .
Patton said that Pell was treated no differently than any other defendant because of his high rank in the Vatican — notifying a legal representative and summoning the defendant to court at a later date is the recommendation of Australian prosecutors in a case like his.
In the Vatican, Pell’s job as secretariat of the economy is so crucial that it has been described as the second-most-powerful role in Rome, after only the pope. But for years, he has faced accusations of improper behavior connected with clergy sexual abuse in Australia. (Read more from “Top-Ranking Vatican Cardinal Charged With Sex Offenses in Australia” HERE)
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Imagine how we would feel if Planned Parenthood appointed to its board of directors someone who:
Opposed late term abortion.
Affirmed that unborn children are full human persons at some point during pregnancy.
Used her credibility as a pro-choice feminist to discredit the central pro-abortion arguments.
How would we feel about that? I think we’d be excited. We’d see that as progress. We’d think that public pressure was moving the needle a bit in our direction. Even more encouraging if Planned Parenthood had fired the rest of its board. Purged it of purists. If empty spots on that board looked like they might go to other “moderates.”
Unexplained Purge at the Vatican’s Pro-Life Thinktank
Now flip that situation around, to see what is really happening. Pope Francis has purged the entire faculty of the Pontifical Council for Life. It was founded by Pope John Paul II as a thinktank and action center to combat what he called the “Culture of Death.” One of its first appointees (and its leader) was the great Dr. Jerome Lejeune. That pioneering researcher had discovered the genetic basis of Downs Syndrome. But Lejeune had been purged from mainstream academia and starved of research funds. Why? Because he opposed what he called the “genocide” aimed at unborn handicapped children. The Council for Life offered him a haven, a place full of allies, a nerve center where the fight for human life could be mapped out throughout the world.
Pro-Choice Philosopher Appointed
All wiped out. Gone. For reasons that are not public, the pope made a clean sweep of the Council for Life. Now he’s filling its positions again from scratch. So far he has reappointed a few of the solid people who were (for unknown reasons) dismissed. But he has made one pick so far that deeply troubles prolifers. As LifeSiteMews reported:
Among the 45 new members Pope Francis has appointed to the Pontifical Academy for Life is an Anglican minister who has argued that abortion should be legal until “18 weeks after conception.”
University of Oxford Professor Nigel Biggar, who was appointed to the Academy for a five-year term, stated in a 2011 dialogue with pro-infanticide ethicist Peter Singer that a preborn baby is “not … the same kind of thing as an adult or a mature human being” and therefore does not deserve “quite the same treatment.”
“I would be inclined to draw the line for abortion at 18 weeks after conception, which is roughly about the earliest time when there is some evidence of brain activity, and therefore of consciousness,” he said as reported by Standpoint magazine.
Then, one year later, when he was the keynote speaker for an event at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, he said that “it is not true that all abortion is equivalent to murder.”
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Pope Francis began his overhaul of the Academy last year by creating new statutes, that among other things, no longer required that members sign a declaration to uphold the Church’s pro-life teachings. The Pope’s next move was to then remove all of the academy members while promising to make new appointments himself.
Former academy member Judie Brown wrote in an article earlier this year that she was shocked by what she called Francis’ move to “deconstruct” the Academy that was once considered a bastion of orthodoxy.
“The Pontifical Academy for Life is undergoing an overhaul by Pope Francis and his political operatives within the Vatican’s hierarchy, and it is one of the most heartbreaking events I have seen in my lifetime. But given the politics of the Vatican, it is not surprising,” she wrote at that time.
A Moderate on Abortion
Now, Biggar is not an extremist. (Unlike Paul Ehrlich, the population crank invited to a recent Vatican conference on biodiversity.) Biggar doesn’t favor abortion for all nine months, or forced sterilization. Biggar is well-known for opposing assisted suicide. That’s good to hear.
On abortion, he dates the beginning of life by the presence of brainwaves. That’s the same criterion we use for the end of life. If we protected all babies with brainwaves, many thousands would be saved. Many women do not even realize that they are pregnant by 18 weeks. For a secular intellectual unconvinced that man is made in the image of God, there is a certain internal logic here: Make brainwaves the “bookends” that mark off what’s fully human and alive from what is not yet or not any longer. Yes, it’s wrong. But it’s a long way from the Democratic Party’s support for abortion for all nine months for any reason.
So if Biggar got appointed to the Planned Parenthood board, that would be progress. It would mean that those leaders in the fight for untrammeled “reproductive rights” were losing confidence. They were responding to public pressure. Maybe they were ready to offer some compromise. Prolifers would rightly see it as blood in the water.
Of course, those pro-abortion groups are making no such appointments. Planned Parenthood, instead, is shoveling money to politicians like Kamala Harris. Before she was a U.S. senator, Harris prosecuted journalists. Why? For documenting Planned Parenthood’s crass trade in unborn baby parts.
A Loss of Nerve or Change of Direction?
No, it is the Vatican that is purging its ranks and appointing “moderates.” This institution under previous popes stood prophetically (and almost alone) against the destruction of unborn children for our sexual convenience. Catholic laymen led the fight against abortion. We were thrilled when millions of evangelicals discovered the issue and joined the fight. Even now, public opinion seems to be swinging in our direction.
But the Vatican under Francis wants to strike a different note of prophecy. Instead of resisting the culture of death, with his actions with the Pontifical Academy of Life the pope has struck a note of compromise. But not on all issues. He also boldly stepped forward … and condemned the very same things that secular progressives like to condemn:
An “unrestricted capitalism” that doesn’t even exist.
A future apocalypse caused by Westerners using our air conditioners.
A wave of “xenophobia” among nations already overwhelmed by immigrants and led by multiculturalists.
Without invoking (or imperiling) the infallible authority that Catholics believe a pope has, he can still make policy decisions that are very damaging indeed. (For more from the author of “Pro-Choicer Appointed to Key Vatican Pro-Life Think Tank” please click HERE)
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Newly released information written by Pope Emeritus Benedict has details of an alleged “gay lobby” he says tried to influence decisions at the Vatican.
Benedict is set to release a book titled “The Last Conversations,” in Italian on September 9. An Italian newspaper was able to access certain excerpts from the book and ran an article about some of the contents. “The Last Conversations” will be the first time a pope has ever judged his own pontificate after the fact.
Benedict’s papacy ended with his resignation — the first pope in six centuries to do so –and he has claimed he did so freely, without coercion. However, in the book, he speaks of a “powerful” gay lobby at the Vatican, and how he worked to dismantle it. According to The Guardian, these men “had their sexuality in common but worked together for their own ends rather than pushing the cause of gay believers.”
During his time as pope, Benedict denounced gay marriage, calling it a “manipulation of nature,” as well as threat to the foundation of society, the family. Official Church teaching maintains that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered,” and argues for the compassionate treatment of gay individuals.
After he resigned in 2013, Benedict vowed to remain “hidden to the world.” He acknowledged that his body and mind were no longer strong enough to hold a position of power and took up residence in a former convent inside the Vatican. Since then, he’s dedicated his time to reading and writing. He also kept a journal during his papacy, but said he plans on destroying it.
The current pope, Pope Francis, recently made news concerning comments he made apologizing to gays on behalf of the Catholic Church. “After many hours of prayer and various consultations, I’ve realized that mere apologies do not constitute appropriate repentance for the Catholic Church’s many sins … I think that the Church not only should apologize … to a gay person whom it offended, but it must also apologize to the poor as well…,” he said. (For more from the author of “Pope Benedict Says ‘Gay Lobby’ Tried to Influence the Vatican” please click HERE)
Photo Credit: Associated Press Two new books are deepening a Vatican scandal with tales of mismanagement and greed, such as sainthood causes that can cost up to a half-million dollars and a monsignor allegedly breaking down the wall of his next-door neighbor – a sick, elderly priest – to expand his already palatial apartment.
Pope Francis has made it a top priority to reform the Vatican bureaucracy known as the Curia, a hive of intrigue and gossip. He appointed a commission of eight experts in 2013 to gather information and make recommendations after an earlier expose helped drive his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, to a historic resignation.
The leaks in the new books are seen as part of a bitter internal struggle between the reformers and the old guard. This week, the Vatican arrested two former members of the commission in an investigation into stolen documents. (Read more from “Vatican Scandals Heat up With Revelations of Greed, Intrigue” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-04 00:58:402016-04-11 10:56:34Vatican Scandals Heat up With Revelations of Greed, Intrigue
