Category: Religion

{{Pope Francis said on Friday he had not wanted to become pontiff and that he had decided against moving into the luxurious papal apartments in order to preserve his mental health.}}

Meeting thousands of children from Jesuit schools across Italy and Albania, Francis held a question-and-answer session in which one girl, Teresa, asked him if he had wanted to become the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

“Anyone who wants to be pope doesn’t care much for themselves, God doesn’t bless them. I didn’t want to be pope,” he said.

Another girl, Caterina, asked why he had refused to move into the sumptuous papal apartments, choosing to live instead in a simple hotel-like Vatican residence.

“It’s not just a question of riches but also a personality issue. I need to live among people and if I lived on my own, perhaps a little isolated, it wouldn’t do me good,” he said, adding that he had made the decision for “psychiatric reasons”.

The former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina, who has set a humble tone for the papacy since his elevation in March, also said it was important to lead a simpler life, given the extent of poverty and suffering in the world.

“These days there is a lot of poverty in the world and that’s a scandal when we have so many riches and resources to give to everyone,” he said. “We all have to think about how we can become a little poorer.”

Earlier this week, Francis denounced what he called a “culture of waste” in an increasingly consumerist world and said throwing away good food was like stealing from poor people.

In another departure from papal tradition, Francis said on Thursday he would not spend his summer in the lavish hilltop palace at Castel Gandolfo that has been host to popes for centuries but would stay in the Vatican.

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{{Pope Francis’ fascination with the devil took on remarkable new twists Tuesday, with a well-known exorcist insisting Francis helped “liberate” a Mexican man possessed by four different demons despite the Vatican’s insistence that no such papal exorcism took place.}}

The case concerns a 43-year-old husband and father who traveled to Rome from Mexico to attend Francis’ Mass on Sunday in St. Peter’s Square.

At the end of the Mass, Francis blessed several wheelchair-bound faithful as he always does, including a man possessed by the devil, according to the priest who brought him, the Rev. Juan Rivas.

Francis laid his hands on the man’s head and recited a prayer. The man heaved deeply a half-dozen times, shook, then slumped in his wheelchair.

The images, broadcast worldwide, prompted the television station of the Italian bishops’ conference to declare that according to several exorcists, there was “no doubt” that Francis either performed an exorcism or a simpler prayer to free the man from the devil.

The Vatican was more cautious. In a statement Tuesday, it said Francis “didn’t intend to perform any exorcism. But as he often does for the sick or suffering, he simply intended to pray for someone who was suffering who was presented to him.”

The Rev. Gabriele Amorth, a leading exorcist for the diocese of Rome, said he performed a lengthy exorcism of his own on the man Tuesday morning and ascertained he was possessed by four separate demons.

The case was related to the legalization of abortion in Mexico City, he said.

Amorth told RAI state radio that even a short prayer, without the full rite of exorcism being performed, is in itself a type of exorcism.

“That was a true exorcism,” he said of Francis’ prayer. “Exorcisms aren’t just done according to the rules of the ritual.”

Rivas took the Vatican line, saying it was no exorcism but that Francis merely said a prayer to free the man from the devil.

“Since no one heard what he said, including me who was right there, you can say he did a prayer for liberation but nothing more,” Rivas wrote on his Facebook page, which was confirmed by his religious order, the Legionaries of Christ.

Fueling the speculation that Francis did indeed perform an exorcism is his frequent reference to Satan in his homilies — as well as an apparent surge in demand for exorcisms among the faithful despite the irreverent treatment the rite often receives from Hollywood.

Who can forget the green vomit and the spinning head of the possessed girl in the 1973 cult classic “The Exorcist”?

In his very first homily as pope on March 14, Francis warned cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel the day after he was elected that “he who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.”

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{{Pope Francis has denounced the global financial system, blasting the “cult of money” that he says is tyrannizing the poor and turning humans into expendable consumer goods.}}

In his first major speech on the subject, Francis demanded Thursday that financial and political leaders reform the global financial system to make it more ethical and concerned for the common good. He said: “Money has to serve, not to rule!”

It’s a message Francis delivered on many occasions when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, and it’s one that was frequently stressed by retired Pope Benedict XVI.

Francis, who has made clear the poor are his priority, made the comments as he greeted his first group of new ambassadors accredited to the Holy See.

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{{The Vatican on Wednesday ordered a disgraced Scottish cardinal to leave Scotland for several months to pray and atone for sexual misconduct, issuing a rare public sanction against a “prince of the church” and the first such punishment meted out by Pope Francis.}}

Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh and recused himself from the March conclave that elected Francis pope after a newspaper reported unnamed priests’ allegations that he acted inappropriately toward them.

O’Brien subsequently acknowledged he had engaged in unspecified sexual misbehavior.

He apologized and promised to stay out of the church’s public life.

On Wednesday, the Vatican said O’Brien, once Britain’s highest-ranking Catholic leader, would leave Scotland for several months of “spiritual renewal, prayer and penance” for the same reasons he decided not to participate in the conclave.

The statement didn’t specify that the decision was imposed on O’Brien by the Vatican as punishment, and in fact went out of its way to suggest that the decision was O’Brien’s.

But in the past, wayward priests have been sanctioned by the Vatican with punishments of “prayer and penance,” and the statement made clear Francis supported the move and that the Holy See would decide his future fate.

Such a sanction is very much in keeping with the church’s legal tradition of making a public reparation for a scandal done to the church, said Austen Ivereigh, director of the Catholic Voices, a British-based Catholic advocacy group.

{Cardinal Keith O’Brien (above) sits at a desk in a room in his home in Edinburgh, Scotland February 27, 2013. The senior cleric resigned under duress on Monday and Pope Benedict took the rare step of changing Vatican law to allow his successor to be elected early, adding to a sense of crisis within the Roman Catholic Church.}

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{{Four years after he began his project to write out every word of the Bible, Phillip Patterson penned the very last lines Saturday at an upstate New York church.}}

“Every single curly-q, every single loop, it was all worth it,” said Patterson, 63, moments after inking the final two verses of the King James Bible. “I’m really going to miss this writing.”

It took Patterson just a few minutes to copy the final lines of the Book of Revelation before a crowd of about 125 people at St. Peter’s Presbyterian Church in Spencertown. He ended the ceremony by saying “Amen.”

Patterson, of Philmont, began copying the complete King James Bible in his neat, looping handwriting in 2009. He spent two years copying the first five books of the Bible as a prototype before starting fresh.

He said he’ll spend about another year working on the book’s binding and covers before donating the fully completed Bible — more than 2,400 pages — to St. Peter’s as a gift.

For now, he said, he’ll just have to get used to his new life without holding a Pigma Micron pen every day.

“I’m going to miss the writing, that’s what I’m going to miss,” he said. “My fingers are fine, no callouses.”

Patterson has said he started the project to learn about the Bible, not as a spiritual quest. But he said the project has helped him become more patient, confident and loving.

The project was slowed by his health problems, including AIDS and anemia. The retired interior designer relies on two canes and leans on walls and furniture to get around his apartment near the Massachusetts border.

Paterson worked as much as 14 hours a day on his project.

{{The Catholic Church has excommunicated a Brazilian priest after he defended homosexuality, open marriage and other practices counter to Church teaching in online videos.}}

In a statement released late on Monday, the priest’s diocese said Father Roberto Francisco Daniel, known to local parishioners as Padre Beto, had “in the name of ‘freedom of expression’ betrayed the promise of fealty to the Church.”

The priest “injured the Church with grave statements counter to the dogma of Catholic faith and morality.”

The actions amount to “heresy and schism,” the statement said, the penalty for which is excommunication, or expulsion from the Church.

The rare punishment follows what Daniel’s bishop and the priest himself said were repeated rebukes about the videos and other public activities, such as a radio broadcast and local newspaper column, in which he challenged Church doctrine.

The 47-year-old cleric, who studied theology in Germany, is popular in the southeastern city of Bauru, where he has been a priest since 2001.

He is known for his rock T-shirts, a silver stud pierced through his right ear and his habit of posing, as on his official Facebook page, with a glass of beer.

On Facebook and Twitter, Daniel posted a brief statement about the excommunication: “I feel honored to belong to the long list of people who have been murdered and burned alive for thinking and searching for knowledge.”

{{Retired Pope Benedict XVI is coming home.

The Vatican says the 86-year-old emeritus pontiff will move into his new retirement home in the Vatican gardens Thursday.}}

Benedict has been living at the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, in the hills south of Rome, since he resigned Feb. 28.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Tuesday that Benedict will live on the ground floor of the monastery inside the gardens that has been renovated for his use. A small staff will join him.

Benedict looked remarkably frail on March 23 — the last time he was seen by the public — when Pope Francis traveled to Castel Gandolfo to greet his predecessor.

Lombardi has insisted Benedict isn’t suffering from any specific medical condition but is just old and tired.