Letter #31, 2024, Wednesday, September 18: Medjugorje I arrived in the village of Medjugorje today. Medjugorje is the rocky village in Bosnia-Hercegovina where it is said that six children began, in 1981, to see the Virgin Mary daily, and where three of the six are said to have continued to see her daily up to [...]
Italian historian Alberto Melloni. He has written a book on the history of papal conclaves (link). Now he is calling on Pope Francis to change the rules of the next papal conclave... in order to avoid a possible division among the cardinals, and a division in the Church after the conclave... Melloni teaches History of [...]
Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issues new clarification on blessings for gay and irregular couples January 4, 2024 In Rome, at noon today, a new text (link) has just appeared attempting to explain the Vatican's controversial position on the blessing of same-sex couples. Entitled "Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith: Press release [...]
Pope Francis with Cardinal Angelo Becciu, some years ago. A verdict in Becciu's two-and-a-half-year trial — dubbed by the press the "Vatical trial of the century" — will come tomorrow afternoon, December 16. A final reflection on this trial... “Those who work at the Holy See and the Vatican City State certainly do so faithfully [...]
Andrea Gagliarducci is a young Italian journalist who works steadily, and tirelessly, around the clock, to cover the Vatican. He has become one of the experts on the Vatican trial that is currently entering its final days, as a verdict is expected to be handed down at the end of next week. And he is [...]
“Love Jesus more than anything. Let His love be enough for you, and you will emerge victorious from all crises, from all difficulties.” —Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, in a message given today on behalf of Pope Francis, to a group of about 700 seminarians in France on a pilgrimage to Paris (full [...]
November 11, 2020 — Armistice Day and Feast Day of St. Martin of Tours (Armistice Day commemorates the end of the terrible "First World War" in 1918 — a bitter struggle which gave a spiritual and psychological shock to all of Western civilization, which found itself after 1918 unable to fully process the intense evil [...]
The McCarrick Report Is Published: Four "Scapegoats"? Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. And harder to script. What we confront today is a long-awaited “McCarrick Report” which was expected to bring clarity and so healing to the scandal of the former American cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, who betrayed the trust the Church placed in him by [...]
"Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God. You can't kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered." —Pope Francis, speaking in a just-released (2020) documentary film, shown in [...]
#1 Svetlana Kasyan Opera Star from Moscow, Russia “Love and Art Should Reign Again” Thirty-five year old Russian opera star Svetlana Kasyan celebrated her birthday this year at the Vatican with Pope Francis. Kasyan was born and raised in Georgia, and now resides with her husband and young daughter in Moscow. As an opera singer, Kasyan [...]
