According to this still-developing Novus Ordo Watch report, Francis may be organizing a third Council of Nicea to take place in 2025.
Who exactly is Sister Fernanda Barbiero? Rorate has the latest on the Grand Interventionist who has been released to gorge upon the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate.
And here's an example of one of this week's Francis pronouncements where he decides to talk down to Catholics everywhere as if they were 3-years-old: "Christian Life May be Joyful, but It's Not Always a Party" reads the Catholic Herald's headline. There. Now you know. Sometimes bad things happen. You've been warned. Now turn up the Suor Cristina.
Caroline Glick is not buying into the great Francis peace-and-humility tour in the Levant. In this piece from the Jerusalem Post she discusses the offensiveness of his stopping to pray at the security fence between Israel and the West Bank near Bethlehem, the rudeness of his interrupting Benjamin Netanyahu when the latter pointed out (correctly) that Jesus spoke Hebrew in the synagogues, and the disturbing silence he displayed in the face of Palestinian leaders who had publicly called for the annihilation of the Jews. According to Glick, the era of good feelings between Israel and the Vatican has come to an end with Francis. She sees him steering the Catholic Church in a decidedly anti-Jewish direction. Although Traditional Catholics, who have long lamented the Conciliar Church’s attitude of accommodation for the Jews, would strenuously disagree on that point, this piece is still instructive for the following reason: It reveals the absolute emptiness of Francis’ clownish peace gestures. He clearly understands nothing about the history of the region or its peoples and religions, and nothing about the forces impelling them to conflict. Caroline Glick sees through his amateurish political theatrics and so should we.
In this omnibus article from the Daily Beast, Barbie Latza Nadeau covers everything Francis said during his in-air press conference on the plane back from the Holy Land. Among the topics covered are Francis’ hint that he might retire someday, that Benedict XVI pioneered the idea of popes emeritus, that the Church has adopted a “zero tolerance policy” towards clerical sexual abuse (survivor support groups are unimpressed), and that priestly celibacy is not a dogma of the faith and might be changed in the future. In general, a good summing up of a rare uncensored outpouring of the Franciscan spirit.
This Times of Israel piece picks up on a news item that most other outlets neglected to mention, viz. Francis has scrapped any plans to move forward with the beatification of the last known Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, Pius XII. While this will come as no surprise to Traditional Catholics, given Francis’ well-known modernist proclivities, the reason cited by Francis for stalling the beatification is especially telling: Pope Pius the XII doesn’t have any miracles to his credit. As the article mentions, this didn’t stop Francis from bending the rules of the saint-making process when it came time to canonize John XXIII, who even by Novus Ordo standards had only one miracle to his credit. Had Francis simply wanted to defer the question of Pius XII (for any reason whatsoever), he might have just diplomatically mumbled something about the cause still being under investigation. The proffering of this convenient and unbelievable excuse seems like a case of the Conciliar pontiff protesting too much.
