He may not be for much longer:
Pope Francis sacks entire board of Vatican's financial watchdog
The last guy who did that was murdered.
At least he made it through the Middle East without getting assassinated:
"Pope begins pilgrimage with political edge in Jordan" by John L. Allen Jr. | Globe Staff May 24, 2014
Amman, Jordan — Pope Francis may have characterized his three-day swing this weekend to the Middle East as an “exclusively religious” pilgrimage, but on day one in Jordan he struck a couple of notes that sounded an awful lot like politics.
On Saturday, the pope met 400 young refugees and disabled people, many of them part of the estimated 1.3 million Syrians now living in Jordan who have fled their bloody civil war. He issued what he called a “heartfelt appeal” for peace and called on the international community “not to leave Jordan alone” in confronting its humanitarian challenge.
When I think of the number of refugees the U.S has foisted on the world with its wars the numbers are mind-boggling and further thought upon the matter makes me realize its criminal policy.
God damn this government. Sorry for the sacrilege, your holiness.
Earlier, the pope complained that the Syrian conflict “has lasted all too long” and urged both a peace deal there and a “just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” During a speech later in the day, he added a strong condemnation of the arms trade at the last minute, asking that “God convert those who make and sell arms and have a project of war.”
He certainly says some nice things.
The pontiff also used strong language on a burning political concern for the small Christian community in the Middle East — the protection of religious minorities.
I didn't think he would mind when I'm doing God's work.
“Religious freedom is a fundamental human right,” the pontiff said in remarks at Amman’s Royal Palace, a speech that marked his debut in an Arab nation and a majority Muslim state.
“I cannot fail to express my hope that [religious freedom] will be upheld throughout the Middle East and the entire world,” Francis said, adding that “Christians consider themselves, and indeed are, full citizens.”
He insisted that religious liberty includes “freedom to choose the religion one judges to be true,” seemingly an indirect criticism of laws common in Muslim societies that bar defection from Islam.
(As a footnote, that phrase stirred heartburn in some traditionalist Catholic circles on the grounds that it contradicts earlier papal condemnations of “religious indifferentism,” meaning the idea that all religions are equal. In context, however, that didn’t really seem what Francis had in mind. It may be a sign of the times that just as some liberal activists once stood ready to pounce on every word of Benedict XVI, the other side now has its eyes on Francis.)
I'm such a contradiction, for I would be considered one of those traditionalist Catholics in most senses, but am totally opened-minded regarding the flogging of the Muslims. I suppose seeing the truth will do that to you; that, and make you withdraw from the faith.
Francis is the fourth pope to visit the “Holy Land,” meaning Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, and Israel. He’ll spend most of Sunday in Bethlehem before heading to Jerusalem, with a schedule on Monday that includes visits to the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall.
************
In a brief departure from a prepared text, Francis offered a one-word exhortation to those Christians, who have dropped from 20 percent of the Middle East’s population in the early 20th century to less than 5 percent today: “Corraggio!,” the Italian word for courage, which is used colloquially to mean “hang in there; stay strong.”
I think it was the Anti-Christ Bush who spelled doom for the regions Christians. That was when Al-CIA-Duh and other sectarian groups began to appear and savage people who had lived together and cross-mingled for centuries in relative peace and harmony.
Strange how things always go to hell after we show up, 'eh, Americans?
Ironically, Jordan may be one of the least logical Middle Eastern venues in which to make the case, because Christians here are relatively well off. They’re prominent in the economic and political elite, and Jordan’s Hashemite rulers pride themselves on being urbane and tolerant, sponsoring various interfaith projects.
I can't even remember the last time I read about Jordan in my Globe.
Even here, however, Christians report a sense of being seen as “other,” and some privately wonder how long the monarchy can hold out against the Arab Spring that elsewhere has emboldened fundamentalists.
That is a signal to the king that you better keep cooperating, since we now know all the revolutions and liberations given fancy names in my paper are controlled opposition coups and planned events. In the case of the Arab Spring, it was to dump stale dictators and install new blood. Not working out that well, but that's the deal.
Against that backdrop, Francis sketched a vision of religious freedom that goes well beyond physical safety....
I'm just glad he returned safe.
Locals seemed pumped up to see the pope, with 2,000 flag-waving Christian youth lining the streets while a motorcade of eight red Land Rover armored convertibles led the pontiff to Amman’s Royal Palace. (The pope took a simple four-door sedan.)
Thankfully, he was not gunned down.
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Pope keeps pushing it, though:
"Pope will host Mideast presidents in prayer summit; Another sign of wider role" by Jodi Rudoren and Isabel Kershner | New York Times May 26, 2014
JERUSALEM — Pope Francis inserted himself directly into the collapsed Middle East peace process Sunday, issuing an invitation to host the Israeli and Palestinian presidents for a prayer summit at his Vatican apartment in an overture that has again underscored the broad ambitions of his papacy.
Francis took the unexpected step in Bethlehem, where he became the first pontiff ever to fly directly into the West Bank and to refer to the Israeli-occupied territory as the “State of Palestine.”
I suppose it would look to obvious if some "radical Islamist" were to gun him down now.
After decrying the overall situation between Israel and the Palestinians as “increasingly unacceptable,” the pope made a dramatic, unscheduled stop at Israel’s contentious concrete barrier separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem, where he prayed and touched his head against the graffiti-covered wall.
This guy is really going to pizza some people off (blog editor smiling).
“There is a need to intensify efforts and initiatives aimed at creating the conditions for a stable peace based on justice, on the recognition of rights for every individual, and on mutual security,” Francis said. Peace “must resolutely be pursued, even if each side has to make certain sacrifices.”
Presidents Shimon Peres of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority accepted the pope’s invitation to pray together; Abbas’s spokesman said the meeting would take place June 6.
Although the meeting is likely to be more symbolic than substantive — Israel’s presidency is ceremonial, and Peres leaves office in July — it could have atmospheric significance for a peace process that has all but completely stalled.
I think of it as the Kerry failure, but that's just me.
More broadly, the pope’s actions Sunday posed a dramatic example of how, barely a year into his papacy, he is seeking to reassert the Vatican’s ancient role as an arbiter of international diplomacy. He has already had some success.
“If you look around the world, there are very few political leaders who are relatively untainted,” said Philip Jenkins, a history professor who teaches at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. “People want to believe there is somebody good and charismatic, and a good authority figure, out there.”
Well, yeah, but that church sex abuse scandal hanging over the whole thing.... and besides, I've given up on and am tuned off to authority now wherever it is coming from. They lie. They lie right to your face.
The solution in the 21st-century is for people to turn to themselves and their own intuitions and capabilities.
But plunging into Mideast politics can be especially perilous. In a region where religious divisions overlay the political impasse, the prayer summit “is taking the negotiations to another level — a meeting before God,” said the Rev. Jamal Khadar, head of a West Bank seminary and a spokesman for the pope’s visit.
The idea, he added, is to “make religion part of trying to find a solution instead of it being seen as a negative and a complication.”
Oded Ben Hur, a former Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, said that by making a personal invitation for a prayer summit, Francis eschewed Vatican protocol and tradition while showing atypical boldness. Most pontiffs, he said, “don’t rock the boat.”
“This is different,” he added. “It’s a balance, but the fact is, there is a move somewhere. He’s not conventional in that sense. When he thinks something, he expresses it.”
Sunday was the second of the pope’s three-day sojourn through the Holy Land, a trip with a carefully designed itinerary. In a delicate diplomatic dance, the pope helicoptered from Bethlehem to Tel Aviv for an official head-of-state welcome to Israel, then back to Jerusalem for an ecumenical dinner with the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople.
That meeting — marking the 50th anniversary of a historic Jerusalem handshake that was the first contact between the world’s two largest churches in 500 years — was the stated purpose of the trip. But it was overshadowed by the pope’s pointed wading into the fraught tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.
:-)
In Bethlehem, where Francis spent six hours, he met Abbas as a peer, giving the Palestinians the kind of high-profile boost they had been seeking, and spotlighting the Vatican’s support for the 2012 UN resolution that upgraded their status to observer-state.
:,-)
He led a spirited Mass in a crowded Manger Square, which was bedecked with photo montages blending Christian iconography with images of Palestinians’ difficult daily reality.
Which is oppression by Israel.
Then he had lunch with families suffering particular hardships under Israel’s occupation and was serenaded by scores of children from the nearby Dheisheh Refugee Camp, home to some 12,000 people exiled from former family homes since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Exiled, ethnic cleansing, what's the difference?
But perhaps the defining image of the trip was the pope’s surprise exit from his open-topped vehicle to pray at a section of the concrete barrier that snakes along and through the West Bank. Palestinians loathe the barrier — Abbas had earlier called it “monstrous” — and Israel insists it is essential to its security.
It's really an apartheid wall meant to steal the best land. Sorry.
Francis prayed silently for several minutes, then touched his forehead to the wall, where someone had spray-painted “Pope, we need some 1 to speak about justice.”
This service is tearing me up.
Welcomed to Tel Aviv by Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Francis reiterated his call for a “sovereign homeland” for Palestinians “with freedom of movement.”
“I implore those in positions of responsibility to leave no stone unturned in the search for equitable solutions to complex problems,” he said. “The path of dialogue, reconciliation, and peace must constantly be taken up anew, courageously and tirelessly.”
Except those are the guys who put things under the rocks and made them so complex in the first place. For personal gain, among other reasons.
Netanyahu said at the ceremony, “Our hand is outstretched in peace to whoever wants to live with us in peace,” but also referred to Jerusalem as Israel’s “eternal capital, the heart of our faith,” anathema to Palestinians’ aspirations to have East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
The prime minister’s spokesman declined to say whether Netanyahu was aware of negotiations underway for the Vatican prayer summit — or whether he approved.
Who cares what he thought?
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"Pope delivers blockbuster day in Middle East; Dizzying tour shows his energy" by John L. Allen Jr. | Globe Staff May 26, 2014
BETHLEHEM — Pope Francis, despite being a 77-year-old man missing part of one lung, has already shown that he has a remarkable reservoir of energy. If more proof were required that this pope has no off switch, however, day two of his three-day swing through the Middle East certainly delivered it.
On a single Sunday, Francis delivered four blockbuster moments, any one of which would probably have been enough to label the day historic.
The pontiff began with a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, after which he celebrated an open-air Mass in Bethlehem, believed by Christians to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
Along the way, he decided to hop out of his car to walk up to the massive barrier that separates Israel from the West Bank, standing for several moments of what a Vatican spokesperson later described as silent prayer, and finished by physically placing his forehead against the wall and then making the sign of the cross.
You know, there is another way of looking at this: a wall to keep the Zionist penned in!
Images of the moment, which was not part of the pope’s planned schedule, quickly made the rounds of the world. For Palestinians, who see the barrier as a symbol of what they regard as Israeli oppression, it was hailed as a gesture of solidarity with their cause.
Can it be seen as anything else?
Some Jews saw it that way, too. The chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo di Segni, testily told Italian television that he will listen to Francis offer criticism of Israel’s barrier when the Vatican tears down the massive stone walls that surround its own physical territory.
Oh, he made the Jews angry, huh?
Please, dear Pope, please, please be careful. Please vet your guard well. Please, please, keep only those most trusted close to you. And watch that kitchen staff.
On the other hand, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the official Vatican spokesman, gave the moment a loftier interpretation. He said it was the pope’s way of expressing “participation in the suffering” of the peoples of the region, and illustrating his hope for “harmony, union, and peace in this land.”
In a way, that’s the beauty of gestures, in that they are open to multiple interpretations.
Maybe the rabbi would like to interpret this.
In any event, the impromptu flourish grabbed attention and stirred conversation, providing an iconic visual that will resonate long after Francis is back in Rome.
As it turns out, that was only a prelude to the day’s real news flash.
In a surprise announcement at the conclusion of his Mass in Bethlehem, the pope said he was inviting both President Shimon Peres of Israel and Abbas to the Vatican to take part in a common prayer for peace, saying that “the men and women of these lands, and of the entire world, all of them, ask us to bring before God their fervent hopes for peace.”
Lombardi called it a “creative and courageous” gesture on the part of Francis, adding that the hope is to organize the encounter quickly. Though Lombardi did not say so out loud, the rush is in part because Peres’s term ends July 27.
Both leaders quickly accepted the invitation, which comes one month after the latest attempt at restating peace negotiations broke down. Though the official motive for the meeting would be the prayer, it might also be an occasion for the two leaders to talk informally about substantive matters.
Francis then visited a camp for refugees and warned Palestinian youth that “violence is never defeated with violence.”
Afterward he departed for Israel, arriving at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport. Going there first, rather than taking the more direct route from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, was notable; Israel prefers its guests to first step foot in the country on undisputed Israeli territory.
So he sort of slighted them there, too.
During his brief address, which marked his introduction to the Israeli public, Francis demonstrated his sensitivity in two key ways.
First, in a passage devoted to the Holocaust, the pope’s prepared text included a reference to the fact that Christians were among its victims. Francis added that those who paid the ultimate price were “in the first place, Jews,” thereby avoiding potential criticism that he might have been trying to suggest equivalence between Jewish and Christian suffering.
He doesn't want the hassle.
Second, he inserted a last-minute reference to the atrocity on Saturday at a Jewish museum in Brussels that left four people dead, including two Israelis. Francis said he was “very saddened” by what happened, explicitly called it an “anti-Semitic attack,” and invoked God’s healing for the wounds it caused.
Related: French Screwings
We are all getting screwed by the lies.
Undoubtedly Israelis would have found it disappointing had Francis been mute on the subject, so the pontiff demonstrated a good sense of what his audience is feeling at the time he meets them.
Francis also repeated the invitation he had first issued on Palestinian territory for Peres and Abbas to join him in Rome.
Finally, later Sunday, Pope Francis held a meeting with Orthodox leader Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, commemorating a historic encounter between a pope and a patriarch in Jerusalem 50 years ago. Francis and Bartholomew were to sign a joint declaration, committing their respective churches to partnership on a variety of fronts.
Afterward, the two men made history by holding a joint prayer service for the very first time in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is where Christians believe Jesus was buried, making it one of the holiest spots on the Christian map.
It is also one of the most disputed, with a variety of Christian churches jealously guarding their powers of guardianship. In 2008, a brawl famously broke out between Greek Orthodox and Armenian monks at the site.
In that context, the show of unity between Francis and Bartholomew, considered “first among equals” in the Orthodox world, looms as a virtually unprecedented gesture in favor of what experts call “ecumenism,” meaning the push to heal the divisions in the Christian fold.
For the record, Francis is hardly finished. On Monday he is scheduled to visit the Dome of the Rock and meet with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem; to visit the Western Wall and meet the chief rabbis of Israel; to lay a wreath at the tomb of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism and a father of the State of Israel; to meet both Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel; and to encounter various local Christians.
It's a history that makes most Americans eyes glaze over because they don't know what you are talking about. Ejewkhazional $y$tem made sure it is obscure knowledge, and jew$papers do not help.
In addition, he has also said that he will hold a second airborne press conference on the flight home to Rome late Monday night. His first such encounter with the press, on his return from a trip to Brazil in July, produced his celebrated “Who am I to judge?” line about gays.
One can dispute the merits, or the lasting significance, of any of Sunday’s milestones in papal activity. Taken together, however, they at least suggest a pope who is hardly running out of gas.
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"Pope lays wreath at tomb of Zionism founder" by Jodi Rudoren | New York Times May 27, 2014
All his good work on this trip undone.
JERUSALEM — Making history for the second day, Pope Francis laid a wreath Monday on the grave of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, becoming the first pope to do so.
The gesture of support to Israel followed several gestures the day before that lent a spiritual lift to Palestinian aspirations for sovereignty.
He's playing both sides?
The visit was part of a marathon morning tour of Jerusalem in which Francis took off his shoes to enter the Dome of the Rock and later stood for several minutes with his right palm on the ancient stones of the Western Wall before placing a note between them.
At the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, he kissed the hands of six Holocaust survivors as he heard their specific stories, and, echoing a Jewish mantra, said: “Never again, Lord, never again!”
At the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Francis added to his already packed itinerary a quick visit to a memorial to Israeli victims of terrorist attacks, perhaps in an effort to counterbalance the powerful lift he provided to Palestinians with an unscheduled stop Sunday at the concrete barrier dividing Bethlehem from Jerusalem.
“I explained to the pope that building the security fence prevented many more victims that Palestinian terror, which continues today, planned to harm,” Netanyahu said after the visit, where he pointed out the tablet commemorating the 85 people killed in a 1994 bombing at the Jewish center in Buenos Aires, the pope’s hometown.
Related:
"AMIA was Mossad False-flag Operation
It’s interesting to note that the very first day of the Jewish Center
(AMIA) bombing in Buenos Aires on July 1994, which resulted in the
death of 85 people, the Zionist owned mainstream media blamed Iran and
Hizb’Allah – in order to cover the long histroy of false-flag operations
by Israeli Mossad -
and as expected, a team of Israeli investigators arrived in Buenos
Aires the very next day to remove any possible lead to Israel – as they
did in case of Hotel Paradise (an Israeli hotel in Mombbasa) bombing in Kenya and other places.
Tehran denied the Zionist allegations and later the presiding judge,
Galeono, was dismissed for taking bribe from Mossad and fabricating
evidence against the Iranian diplomat Soleimanpour. A British court
refused to order the extradiction of the Iranian diplomat....
--MORE--"
This is really getting old.
According to a text message from the prime minister’s office, while standing at the site, Francis said: “Terrorism is absolute evil. It stems from evil and it results in evil. Never again! Never again!”
And sadly, it is a construct of government intelligence agencies that fund and direct them.
The pope embraced two Argentine friends — Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Omar Abboud, a leader of Argentina’s Muslim community — in front of the Western Wall, near the disputed hilltop compound in Jerusalem that is at the heart of decades of Israel-Arab tensions. Skorka and Abboud joined the pontiff’s official delegation as a symbol of interfaith conciliation.
After praying at the wall, Francis left a handwritten note with the ‘‘Our Father’’ prayer written in his native Spanish in between the cracks of stone.
The pope’s itinerary in Israel included meetings with Netanyahu and with President Shimon Peres of Israel, who has accepted his invitation for a peace-prayer summit meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority in the Vatican next month.
Asked why Francis had invited Peres, whose position is largely ceremonial, rather than Netanyahu, who is Abbas’s counterpart in peace talks, the Vatican spokesman said the pope and the Israeli president had developed a warm relationship of “great esteem” and Peres had urged him with “great insistence” to visit the Holy Land before his term expires in July.
“The pope has with President Peres a good feeling, this is clear,” the spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters at a news conference late Sunday. “This is not an exclusion of the other, but there are good premises to pray together with President Peres and Mahmoud Abbas.”
The crammed schedule — nine stops in five hours — started the final leg of the 77-year-old pontiff’s three-day sojourn through the Holy Land, which the Vatican had described as a “purely religious” pilgrimage but in which he waded pointedly into the fraught politics of the region.
On Sunday, Francis became the first pope to travel directly into Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory and to call it the “State of Palestine,” affirming the 2012 United Nations resolution upgrading its status.
An unscheduled stop provided the defining image of the day, when the pope touched his forehead to the graffiti-scarred concrete barrier dividing Bethlehem from Jerusalem.
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"Israel, Palestine OK date for Vatican prayer" by Nicole Winfield | Associated Press May 30, 2014
VATICAN CITY — Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will join Pope Francis for an afternoon praying for peace at the Vatican on June 8, the Vatican said Thursday.
Francis had invited both men to ‘‘my home’’ to pray during his recent trip to the Middle East....
Francis has stressed that he is not seeking to jumpstart peace talks but merely bring the two sides together to pray. He said he arranged for a rabbi and a Muslim cleric to lead the prayers, along with him....
He told reporters on the flight home from Jerusalem on Monday, ‘‘We’ll meet just to pray, and then everyone will go home. But I think praying is important.’’
He called both Abbas and Peres ‘‘men of peace.’’
Sorry, but no Zionist leader is.
The prospects of any breakthrough are slim. Peres, a 90-year-old Nobel peace laureate, holds a largely ceremonial office and is set to step down this summer.
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"First multipolar pope shows unique political touch; Pope meets the charismatics, ‘Trust but verify’ on finances, and did Benedict resign?" by John L. Allen Jr. | Globe Staff June 01, 2014
ROME — Can it really just be diplomatic happenstance that the date set this week for the prayer summit bringing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres together with Pope Francis at the Vatican is a day of particular moment on the Christian calendar?
The June 8 gathering, to which Francis invited the two leaders during his recent trip to the Middle East, will coincide with the Christian feast of Pentecost, when the Bible reports that the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples after Jesus had ascended to Heaven, transforming them from a timid bunch cowering in an upper room into the most fearless missionaries the world has ever seen.
Perhaps in private, Francis is hoping for a similar miracle this time around.
In public, however, the pope is setting the bar low.
***********
That caution doubtless reflects the case-hardened realities of peace politics in the Middle East — high expectations are almost invariably dashed. But it may also reflect the lessons of Francis’s own trip, which brought daily reminders of how intractable the conflict remains.
When he visited Muslim leaders at the Dome of the Rock, the pontiff was forced to sit through diatribes vowing there will never be peace until Israeli “violence” and “occupation” end.
At the same time, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry testily dismissed the pope’s moment of silent prayer the day before at the barrier separating Israel from the West Bank as a “propaganda stunt.”
Well, they would know best considering their ma$$ media mouthpieces. Then again, maybe not. That stuff is failing miserably.
Whatever this summit achieves in terms of the peace process, it illustrates two key points about Francis’ brand of diplomacy.
First, he has adopted a distinctly religious approach.
**********
Second, Francis, an Argentine, is the first pope in history to bridge the planet’s northern and southern hemispheres — the first multipolar pope, that is — and so he doesn’t carry the baggage of being seen as a Western leader.
For centuries, the Vatican’s default setting was to align itself with the perceived great Christian power or powers. For a long time that meant deciding which European monarchy to enlist, while after World War II it meant embracing the European Union and, to some extent, the United States. The idea was that the Vatican’s natural partner would be in the West, which was especially compelling as long as popes were themselves all Europeans.
Today, that assumption no longer holds. Two-thirds of the Catholics in the world live outside the West, and Francis is the first pope from the developing world. His election has freed Catholicism to adopt an à la carte style of diplomacy, forging alliances on specific issues but no longer positioning itself as the de facto chaplain of NATO.
On some issues, such as the Syrian conflict, Francis’ line has been closer to Russia and China than the Western powers.
Uh-oh.
The pope’s feel for a multipolar world can also be glimpsed from the fact that he’s announced two trips to Asia — South Korea in August, and the Philippines and Sri Lanka in January — before he will go anywhere in either Europe or North America.
All that may do little to raise the odds of comity, much less a breakthrough, at the June 8 prayer summit, which will also be attended by a rabbi and a Muslim religious leader. For one thing, the headaches aren’t just diplomatic but also theological.
Jews and Muslims have their own sensitivities about praying with followers of other religions, while for Catholics, Pope John Paul II’s 1986 prayer summit in Assisi, Italy, the birthplace of St. Francis, opened a debate about the limits of interfaith prayer that has never really ended.
It will be fascinating to see what kind of ritual organizers invent, and whether it includes joint prayer or rather separate prayers in the same space.
At the level of realpolitik, it’s not yet clear if the pope’s brand of politics can move the ball, but perhaps that’s not the right test for a distinctly religious actor.
“I realize political credibility is important in this world,” said American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, “but it’s more important to be faithful to God. ... He’s counting on the Lord, and you can’t tell the pope that’s not the right thing to do.”
McCarrick, a veteran diplomatic troubleshooter, spoke to the Globe in Jerusalem during the papal visit.
The pope, he said, “is not putting himself out on a limb, he’s putting himself up on the Cross, and that’s what he’s called to do.”
In any event, he’s certainly doing it in his own unique way.
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UPDATE: As Pope pursues peace, Middle East Christians seek survival
Related:
For Rome mayor, transit is key issue
Bankrupt diocese seeks to save funds
Pope will meet with abuse victims; O’Malley to have role
Group backs marriage for some priests
Also see:
N.D. gay marriage ban challenged
Judge ends Wis. same-sex-marriage ban
Just thought I would throw those in there to get rid of them.
