CULTURE/POLITICS/BELONGING
Just in time for Christmas mass, photographer Piero Pazzi, has delivered his annual “Hot Priest Calendar” where he has selectively photographed some of the sexiest Roman Catholic priests from Vatican City, Italy.
More images at the Daily Grind: http://www.thegailygrind.com/2013/12/09/meet-hottest-catholic-priests-vatican-city-new-2014-calendar/
We don’t think 2102 was the best year for Pope Benedict, what with his relentless rants against marriage equality and his silly foray onto Twitter. For a guy supposed to have a direct line to God, the Pope seems to be a bit out-of-touch.
But wait. What was that recent thing he said? Yes, according to reports today from the BBC, Benedict has come out against the profiteers and selfish-individualists.
“Pope Benedict XVI has condemned ‘unregulated capitalism’ for contributing to world tension, in a new year address to worshippers.”
Hang on, there is more: The Pope also decried ‘the prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated financial capitalism’, as well as ‘various forms of terrorism and crime.’
“The Roman Catholic Church leader spoke at a Mass in the Vatican, then greeted a crowd outside St Peter’s Basilica. He deplored ‘hotbeds of tension and conflict caused by growing instances of inequality between rich and poor’. Continue reading “Now Benedict hates capitalism”
“The church is called to present itself as the lone critic of modernity,” states a front-page article in yesterday’s Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore
Romano, as the Catholic Church reiterated its opposition to same-sex unions. Insisting that homosexual relationships are “intrinsically disordered,” in a later radio interview the pope’s spokesman asked sarcastically why gay marriage proponents don’t now push for legal recognition for polygamous couples as well.
The Huffington Post reports that “The Vatican’s anti-gay marriage media blitz came after three U.S. states approved same-sex marriage by popular vote in the election that returned Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency, Spain upheld its gay marriage law, and France pushed ahead with legislation that could see gay marriage legalized early next year.” For full story see, “Vatican Digs in After Gay Marriage Advances” by Nichole Winfield. Continue reading “Vatican doubles down on marriage”
This week the Vatican will canonize its first ever Native American saint, Kateri Tekakwitha. As the Catholic Church has already bestowed such status on 10,000 other people, this is 
a pretty big deal. A member of the Mohawk tribe who lived in the seventeenth century, Kateri was chosen for canonization following the miraculous recovery of a five-year old boy in 2006. Large numbers of Catholic Native Americans from the US and Canada will make the journey to Rome to witness the recognition of their own personal Saint by Pope Benedict XVI. Coverage of the canonizaton appears in the current edition Time News Feed, and elsewhere. As Sorcha Pollack writes, “Kateri Tekakwitha, also known as Lily of the Mohawks, was born in 1656 in what is today upstate New York. Continue reading “First Native American saint”