Democrats Link Pope’s ‘Economic Justice’ Plea With Obama Agenda

VATICAN CITY, VATICAN – JULY 10: US President Barack Obama (L) meets with Pope Benedict XVI in his library at the Vatican on July 10, 2009 in Vatican City, Vatican. Obama was meeting with The Pope for the first time as President following the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy. Getty Images

Bloomberg | Jul 10, 2009

By Lorraine Woellert

President Barack Obama visits the Vatican today as a papal call for a new era of global economic justice has landed at the center of a U.S. political debate over the government’s reach into the economy.

U.S. labor unions and some Roman Catholic politicians are using a July 7 economic message from Pope Benedict XVI to push more financial-services regulation, expanded workers’ rights, limits on pollution and greater access to health care.

The Pope “has provided a road map for how we can move ahead to accomplish economic justice,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut. She is a Catholic member of the House Democratic leadership who has a 100 percent rating from the Washington-based Americans for Democratic Action, which describes itself as the “nation’s oldest independent liberal political organization.”

DeLauro and Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts yesterday opened a campaign of Catholic Democrats called “Pope Greets Hope” to draw a link between Church doctrine and Obama’s policy agenda. Obama will discuss the pontiff’s economic message with the Pope today, said White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs.

‘Real Teeth’

The Pope’s 150-page encyclical to bishops, released to coincide with a meeting of the Group of Eight nations in Italy, urged leaders to create a “true world political authority” to give “real teeth” to global economic and financial regulatory institutions.

“Profit is useful if it serves as a means toward an end,” wrote Benedict, 82. “Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.”

DeLauro, 66, likened Benedict’s views on capitalism “to what the president is trying to do domestically by prioritizing health-care reform, global warming and education.”

The economic-justice movement championed by many U.S. Catholics has its roots in the early 20th Century and aims to improve the plight of the neediest. It helped put Catholic voters behind Democrats for decades, starting with an allegiance to President Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal.

Shift to Republicans

In the 1980s, the U.S. Church’s leaders began aligning with conservative Republicans on issues such as opposition to abortion, gay rights and stem-cell research.

Catholics make up about one-quarter of the U.S. adult population, according to the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. In November, Obama received 54 percent of the Catholic vote, while the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona, got 44 percent. A majority of Catholics backed President George W. Bush in 2004.

“The Catholic vote is the most important swing constituency today,” said Steven Wagner, who led Republican Party efforts to woo Catholics in the 2000 election.

Republicans have largely kept silent about the Pope’s encyclical. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who converted to Catholicism in March and this year called Obama’s policies “anti-Catholic values,” focused on social issues in an interview yesterday.

Democrats who support abortion rights “have so many issues to be defensive about that” using the Pope’s encyclical to buttress their position “verges on silly,” he said.

‘At Variance With the Teaching’

“Ask them on any of a half-dozen social issues where they stand, and on every one of them they’ll be at variance with the teaching of the Church,” Gingrich said.

Obama’s policies have been the focus of controversies involving Catholics several times since he took office. In May, his invitation to speak at the University of Notre Dame, near South Bend, Indiana, sparked protests because it occurred about the same time he lifted a ban on federal funding for abortion providers overseas. On July 6, Obama increased federal spending limits on embryonic stem-cell research, altering a Bush administration policy favored by many Catholics.

Some Catholic health-care providers said they are less inclined to support Obama’s effort to overhaul the U.S. health- care system because it includes a plan to weaken legal protections for medical workers who object to abortion or birth control. Catholic health-care providers, who provide about 15 percent of U.S. hospital beds, want to maintain a Bush-era “conscience clause” that shields those who refuse to perform the procedures.

Obama supporters said the Pope’s call for economic justice gives Democrats a chance to highlight the failings of the free- market ideals of the Republican Party.

Union Campaign

The Service Employees International Union and other labor groups are using the encyclical to try to win support from Catholic senators such as Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Democrat Mary Landrieu of Louisiana for a bill that would make it easier for unions to represent workers, said Mary Kay Henry, executive vice president of the 2 million-member SEIU.

The Pope “offers a much-needed reminder that to create an economy that works for everyone it is critical to protect workers’ fundamental right to join together,” said John Sweeney, president of the 11 million-member AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. federation.

Republican Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, a Catholic, said any effort by Democrats to use the Pope’s remarks to push their agenda would fail.

Most people “would rather go to work than be on welfare,” said Boehner, 59. “We think our economic agenda will do more for Americans.”

A Pope’s new world order: Pope Benedict XVI proposes stunningly radical approach to global economy

There’s no doubt that in urging the creation of something akin to a world government, he has established a landmark for his papacy and for Catholicism.

NY Daily News | Jul 8, 2009

Pope Benedict’s encyclical on economic justice, delivered amid the global financial meltdown, is an extraordinary document, both in its tough challenges and in the remarkably radical solutions it prescribes.

The pontiff focuses on moral dimensions of markets, globalization, consumerism, environmental protection, the role of technology, workers’ rights and more. To call the document sweeping is an understatement.

Individually, many of Benedict’s teachings are profound ethical and social statements. A few examples:

- “Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.”

- “… there is no doubt that foreign workers, despite any difficulties concerning integration, make a significant contribution to the economic development of the host country.”

- “What is meant by the word ‘decency’ in regard to work? It means work that expresses the essential dignity of every man and woman in the context of their particular society: work that is freely chosen, effectively associating workers, both men and women, with the development of their community; work that enables the worker to be respected and free from any form of discrimination; work that makes it possible for families to meet their needs and provide schooling for their children. …”

- “Financiers must rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity, so as not to abuse the sophisticated instruments which can serve to betray the interests of savers.”

Cumulatively, Benedict’s diagnoses of global economic ills lead to a call for nothing short of “a profoundly new way of understanding human enterprise.”

He would move toward markets geared to “redistribute” wealth from advanced to poorer countries and sees “urgent need of a true world political authority” to, among other tasks, “manage the global economy.”

As we said, Benedict’s encyclical, titled “Charity in Truth,” is stunningly radical, notably in its prescriptions for the temporal order. There’s no doubt that in urging the creation of something akin to a world government, he has established a landmark for his papacy and for Catholicism.

Pope Endorses “World Political Authority”

Pope calls for a “true world political authority” to manage the affairs of the world.

AIM Column | Jul 7, 2009

By Cliff Kincaid

The controversial Papal statement comes just before a meeting of the G-8 nations and a scheduled meeting between the Pope and President Obama at the Vatican on July 10.

Some in the media are calling it just a statement about “economic justice.” But Pope Benedict XVI’s “Charity in Truth” statement, also known as an encyclical, is a radical document that puts the Roman Catholic Church firmly on the side of an emerging world government.

In explicit and direct language, the Pope calls for a “true world political authority” to manage the affairs of the world. At the same time, however, the Pope also warns that such an international order could “produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature” and must be guarded against somehow.

The New York Times got it right this time, noting the Pope’s call for a world political authority amounted to endorsement of a New World Economic Order, a long-time goal of the old Soviet-sponsored international communist movement. Bloomberg.com highlighted the Pope’s call for a new world order with “teeth.”

The Pope’s shocking endorsement of a “World Political Authority,” which has prophetic implications for some Christians who fear that a global dictatorship will take power in the “last days” of man’s reign on earth, comes shortly after the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis issued a call for global taxes and more powerful global institutions. U.N. General Assembly President, Miguel D’Escoto, a Communist Catholic Priest, gave a speech at the event calling on the nations of the world to revere “Mother Earth” but concluded with words from the Pope blessing the conference participants.

The controversial Papal statement comes just before a meeting of the G-8 nations and a scheduled meeting between the Pope and President Obama at the Vatican on July 10.

Sounding like Obama himself, Pope Benedict says this new international order can be accomplished through “reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth.”

The “teeth” may come in adopting the global environmental agenda, which the Pope warmly embraces.

Sounding like Al Gore, the Pope said that one pressing need is “a worldwide redistribution of energy resources, so that countries lacking those resources can have access to them.” He adds that “This responsibility is a global one, for it is concerned not just with energy but with the whole of creation, which must not be bequeathed to future generations depleted of its resources.”

“The Church has a responsibility towards creation and she must assert this responsibility in the public sphere,” he explains.

In a statement that sounds like an endorsement of a new global warming treaty, which will be negotiated at a U.N. conference in December, the Pope says, “The international community has an urgent duty to find institutional means of regulating the exploitation of non-renewable resources, involving poor countries in the process, in order to plan together for the future.”

“The technologically advanced societies can and must lower their domestic energy consumption, either through an evolution in manufacturing methods or through greater ecological sensitivity among their citizens.” he declares.

In terms of how this new “world political authority” should look, the Pope says that it, too, should have “teeth” in the form of “the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums.” Pope Benedict declares that “such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights.”

But the document, which is more than 30,000 words long, is contradictory in that it pretends that a world government can co-exist with freedom and democracy. For example, the statement calls for “a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization.” The term “subsidiarity” is usually defined as having matters handled by local authorities, not international bureaucrats.

In another example of double-speak, the Pope declares that “Globalization certainly requires authority, insofar as it poses the problem of a global common good that needs to be pursued. This authority, however, must be organized in a subsidiary and stratified way, if it is not to infringe upon freedom and if it is to yield effective results in practice.”

He doesn’t explain how it will be possible for citizens to influence or control this “world political authority” when they are under its bureaucratic control.

In the statement about how the New World Order could turn into a tyranny, the Pope is also contradictory, declaring that “…the principle of subsidiarity is particularly well-suited to managing globalization and directing it towards authentic human development. In order not to produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature, the governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together.”

Against, he doesn’t explain how people on the local or even national levels will be able to resist this tyranny.

In a strong endorsement of foreign aid, the Pope says that “In the search for solutions to the current economic crisis, development aid for poor countries must be considered a valid means of creating wealth for all.”

But there must be more. He says that “…more economically developed nations should do all they can to allocate larger portions of their gross domestic product to development aid, thus respecting the obligations that the international community has undertaken in this regard.”

This statement seems to be an urgent call for fulfilment of the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals, which involve an estimated $845 billion from the U.S. over a ten-year period.

The Pope goes on to say that the social order should conform to the moral order, but the fact is that on moral issues such as abortion and homosexuality, the agenda of the United Nations is opposed to that of the Catholic Church. Even on capital punishment, there is disagreement. The U.N. opposes it while traditional church teaching (Section 2267 of the Catholic Catechism) allows it in certain cases.

In his statement, the Pope declares that “Some non-governmental Organizations work actively to spread abortion, at times promoting the practice of sterilization in poor countries, in some cases not even informing the women concerned. Moreover, there is reason to suspect that development aid is sometimes linked to specific health-care policies which de facto involve the imposition of strong birth control measures. Further grounds for concern are laws permitting euthanasia as well as pressure from lobby groups, nationally and internationally, in favour of its juridical recognition.”

What he doesn’t mention is that some of these groups operate through and with the support of the United Nations.

Pope calls for a New World Order, with teeth

Pope Benedict XVI arrives for his weekly general audience on July 8, 2009 at Paul VI hall at The Vatican. The pontiff called the day before and on the eve of a G8 summit in L’Aquila, for a new world body “with real teeth” to restore the global economy and prevent further disparities in a letter to Roman Catholics worldwide. Getty Images

POPE Benedict XVI has proposed a new world political authority “with real teeth”

Sydney Morning Herald | Jul 9, 2009

by Barney Zwartz

POPE Benedict XVI has proposed a new world political authority “with real teeth”, possibly in place of the United Nations, to enforce an ethical financial order and end the global financial crisis.

Calling for more aid, a bigger role for trade unions and an economic system aimed at the common good as well as profit, the Pope said only a moral market could end the crisis and solve world poverty.

The proposals were in his long-awaited encyclical – the second-highest level of papal teaching – released in Rome yesterday morning Australian time, before the G8 leaders gathered in Italy to discuss the global crisis.

The conviction that the economy must be autonomous and shielded from moral influences had led humanity to abuse the economic process in a destructive way, the Pope said in the encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth).

Such convictions had led to economic, social and political systems that “trample upon personal and social freedom” and could not deliver justice.

His suggested political authority would manage globalisation, revive economies, stop the crisis deepening, protect the environment and regulate worldwide migration. It would need to be universally recognised and given power to ensure compliance from all countries.

“In terms of secular politics, there’s something for both left and right to cheer, and something for them to be grumpy about,” said the respected Vatican commentator John Allen, observing that in 30,000 words the Pope never mentioned the word “capitalism”.

He said liberals would applaud the Pope’s call for robust government intervention and support for unions, while conservatives would appreciate his unyielding opposition to abortion, birth control and gay marriage, on economic as well as moral grounds.

The Pope, 82, in his third encyclical, wrote that when profit became the exclusive goal, without the common good as its ultimate end, it risked destroying wealth and creating poverty.

The world’s wealth was growing but so was inequality. Aid to developing countries also provided economic benefits to donors, he said.

The Pope said the Church did not have technical solutions, but he offered a large number of specific policy suggestions.

One was that people should be allowed to decide how to allocate a portion of their taxes that would help welfare and aid. Another was that trade unions should also work for non-members, particularly workers in developing countries.

“As society becomes ever more globalised, it makes us neighbours but does not make us brothers,” he said.

Pope Signs New Globalization Encyclical

Pope Benedict XVI waves as he leaves after his weekly general audience on July 1, 2009 at St Peter’s square at The Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI will release a social encyclical on July 7, “Caritas in Veritae” (Charity in thruth). VATICAN CITY, Jul. 4, 2009

Pope Signs New Globalization Encyclical; Tells New Archbishops To Protect Their Flocks

He has said the downturn shows the need to rethink the whole global financial system.

CBS | Jul 4, 2009

(AP)  Pope Benedict XVI signed his latest encyclical Monday, a text on ways to make globalization more attentive to meeting the needs of the poor amid the worldwide financial crisis.

The document, entitled “Charity in Truth,” is expected to be published soon.

The pope has said his third encyclical will outline the goals and values that the faithful must defend to ensure solidarity among all peoples.

Benedict has frequently spoken out on the financial crisis, urging leaders to ensure the world’s poor don’t end up bearing the brunt of the downturn even though they are not responsible for it. He has said the downturn shows the need to rethink the whole global financial system.

The pontiff announced he had signed the document Monday, a major Catholic feast day, after celebrating a Mass during which he told new archbishops they must be models for the faithful, guiding them and protecting them as shepherds care for their flock.

Thirty-four new archbishops, including the new archbishop of New York, Monsignor Timothy Dolan, received the pallium, a band of white wool decorated with black crosses that is a sign of pastoral authority and a symbol of the archbishops’ bond with the pope.

Benedict said the archbishops should be like Christ “who as a good shepherd carried on his back humanity – the lost sheep – to bring them home.”

Benedict has been working on “Caritas in veritate,” as the encyclical is known in Latin, since 2007 but held back on issuing it so that he could update it to reflect the global economic crisis.

An encyclical is the most authoritative document a pope can issue. Benedict has written two in his four years as pope: “God is Love” in 2006 and “Saved by Hope” in 2007.

Dalai Lama’s choice tells of misery

“My life is too complicated to make a movie. They have proposed writing a biography about me but it would have to wait until after I die because some people would be scandalized.”

AFP | Jun 2, 2009

MADRID (AFP) — While the Dalai Lama is on a tour of Europe, a Spanish man who he proclaimed to be the reincarnation of a Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader has spoken of his unhappy childhood at a monastery and his decision to abandon the faith.

Osel Hita Torres made world headlines in 1986 when the Dalai Lama recognised him, then aged 14 months, as the reincarnation of Lama Yeshe, who had died in California two years earlier.

He had been brought to see the Dalai Lama in India by his parents and ended up living at a monastery there, where he was only allowed to socialize with others who had been proclaimed reincarnations, until he turned 18.

But even though many Buddhists worshipped him almost as a god, Torres said in a rare interview published over the weekend in Spain that he feels the experience stunted the development of his personality.

“Psychologically, everything affected me very much. I still feel fury inside and, sometimes, when it comes out, it causes me to lose control and I get depressed,” Torres, 24, told daily newspaper El Mundo.

“They took me away from my family and stuck me in a medieval situation in which I suffered a great deal. It was like living a lie,” added Torres, who now describes himself as a “spiritual scientific agnostic”.

When he was eight, he managed to have a tape recorded message expressing his unhappiness delivered to his mother, who took him away from the Sera monastery.

But Torres said he quickly volunteered to return because of the pressure he felt over being considered to be the reincarnation of Lama Yeshe.

After leaving the monastery for good when he turned 18, he spent a year in Canada followed by six months in Switzerland where he studied philosophy, human rights, art and French.

Torres, who said that for a time he lived at the monastery next to the cabin of actor Richard Gere, who he described as a “great guy, very nice”, is now studying film in Madrid.

He said some aspects of life outside of the monastery really surprised him, such as seeing people kissing in public, and described the bewilderment he felt during his first visit to a nightclub.

“I was amazed to watch everyone dance. What were all those people doing, bouncing, stuck to one another, asphyxiated and enclosed in a box full of smoke? This is music? It sounds like noise. It hurts my ears. It seemed like the strangest thing in the world,” he said.

“What is important for me now is to do something that makes me feel useful, to find a direction to put my energy,” he added.

Asked if he would like to make a movie about his life, he said: “No, my life is too complicated to make a movie. They have proposed writing a biography about me but it would have to wait until after I die because some people would be scandalized.”

The Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since 1959, is the most famous of a lineage of reincarnated spiritual leaders.

The 73-year-old began a visit to Europe on Friday that will take in Denmark, Iceland, Poland, France and the Netherlands.

Hundreds of Irish Catholic priests ‘to be implicated in child abuse report’

Hundreds of Catholic priests are expected to be implicated in alleged child abuse in Ireland in a major report released today.

Telegraph | May 20, 2009

By Sarah Knapton

The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has spent nine years looking into allegations from thousands of former pupils of state schools and orphanages, some which date back more than 60 years.

It is due on Wednesday while a second report looking into how sex abuse complaints were handled by the Catholic Church will be published by the commission in the summer.

It is thought some 500 priests have been implicated in the abuse allegations.

Many thousands of children suffered at the hands of religious orders such as the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy at industrial schools and orphanages. Most of the children were born outside wedlock or came from large impoverished families that could not afford to feed them.

The commission was founded in 2000 following a documentary for Irish television which claimed there was widespread sexual, physical and emotional abuse within Catholic institutions.

Mary Raffety, who produced the programme said the abuse suffered was ‘way off the scale’ and ‘designed to break children.’

At Easter, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said the report would “shock us all”.

“It is likely that thousands of children or young people across Ireland were abused by priests in the period under investigation and the horror of that abuse was not recognised for what it is,” he said during his Holy Thursday homily.

In 2003 the Irish Government offered compensation to victims of institutionalised child abuse in a move expected to cost £725 million.

The Comptroller and Auditor General said the estimated bill was based on just 10,000 of the 150,000 victims coming forward.

If all survivors claimed, the Republic could face a bill about £10.8 billion.

In the second report, due for publication in July, the Catholic Church is likely to face heavy criticism for trying to cover up abuse when it emerged.

In some instances the church simply moved abusive priests from parish to parish to avoid scandal.

“The way the Church handled the scandals, as we now know, was not exemplary to put it mildly,” said Father Vincent Twomey, Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the National University of Ireland.

New guidelines are now in place for the protection of children. In 2006 the the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church was founded.

As late as 2008, a report revealed child protection practices in the Co Cork diocese were inadequate and dangerous, thereby potentially exposing vulnerable young people to further harm.

In January this year every Catholic bishop, missionary society and religious congregation in Ireland was asked to sign a written commitment to implement agreed child protection guidelines. But many of the victims still believe the church has too much power and influence to ever be fully regulated.

In 2006 it was discovered Fr Maurice Dillane, 73, had fathered a child with his 31-year-old girlfriend.

Bishop Pat Buckley said an extremely conservative estimate was that one in 10 of the 5,000 Catholic priests in Ireland enjoyed regular sex with women and some even referred to their clerical collar as the “bird catcher”.

When the statistics were widened to take in practising homosexuals, Bishop Buckley said up to 40 per cent of the Catholic clergy in Ireland were sexually active.

The scandals have caused a rapid decline in priest joining the Irish Catholic Church. Just three priests joined the diocese of Dublin last year.

A spokesman for the Commission said: “The Investigation Committee and Confidential Committee of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse have prepared their reports and presented them to the Commission.

“The work of the Commission has taken longer than expected.

“The Commissioners are very conscious of the importance and urgency of the report and they appreciate the patience shown by participants and by the public and their understanding of the difficulty and complexity of the Commission’s undertaking.”

Discovery of Rwandan genocide priest taints Vatican

Uwayezu, far left, meets Giuseppe Betori, archbishop of Florence, who approved the Rwandan’s appointment

London Times | May 17, 2009

By Jon Swain

THE Vatican has come under renewed pressure to purge its ranks of suspected killers after a second Rwandan Catholic priest accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide was found to be working in Italy under an assumed name.

An international arrest warrant is being prepared by Rwanda for Father Emmanuel Uwayezu following the discovery that he is working in a parish at Empoli, near Florence. It will accuse him of direct complicity in the massacre of more than 80 students, aged from 12 to 20, at a Catholic school where he was headmaster.

One of the few survivors lives in Britain. She still has nightmares and is too afraid to be identified by name. Last week she identified Uwayezu and described how he brought soldiers to the school at Kibeho and conspired with them to have the Tutsi students killed.

“He seemed to be happy with what he was doing. He told us to stay in the classroom. Some people who were working in the kitchen were shot in front of his eyes but he did not say a word. Others were hacked to death, raped or buried alive,” she said. “Now Uwayezu is enjoying his life. Is he really a father [priest]?”

Uwayezu denied taking part in the genocide and said he had tried to save the students. He said their deaths still haunted him. He is a Hutu like another notorious Rwandan priest, Athanase Seromba, who joined the campaign to exterminate Rwanda’s Tutsi minority and who also ended up in Florence.

After the genocide they both escaped to Italy with the help of Catholic supporters and began new lives as priests with the approval of Florence’s archbishop. Seromba, who was found in Italy by The Sunday Times, is serving a life sentence after being convicted of slaughtering 2,000 of his parishioners by bulldozing his church as they cowered inside. He was the first priest to be tried by a United Nations war crimes tribunal for genocide and crimes against humanity.

For a long time the Vatican had vigorously proclaimed his innocence. It also questioned the objectivity of a Belgian court that had given two Rwandan Benedictine nuns long jail sentences for genocide.

It remains to be seen how it will react in Uwayezu’s case. He has modified his name slightly and is known to his parishioners as Wayezu.

In Rwanda in 1994, the Catholic church was the most powerful institution after the government, but some senior members sided openly with the Hutu extremist government and the church hierarchy failed to prevent the slaughter. In 100 days of killing, 800,000 members of the Tutsi minority were massacred. Some priests and nuns sided with the Hutu militias and joined in the slaughter.

Yesterday Rakiya Omaar, the director of African Rights, a human rights organisation that has investigated the genocide and which has issued a comprehensive report on Uwayezu’s activities during the genocide, called on the Catholic church and the Italian and Rwandan authorities to conduct their own investigation.

“All concerned will have drawn lessons from the Seromba case,” she said. “Denials and dismissals by the Catholic church eventually led to his conviction and imprisonment for the remainder of his life.”

President Shimon Peres calls for Vatican control of Christian sites in Israel

In this photo provided by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Pope Benedict XVI welcomes Israeli President Shimon Peres for their private audience at the pope’s summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, on the outskirts of Rome, Thursday, Sept. 6, 2007. The 35-minute meeting between Benedict and Peres was the first since the veteran statesman and Nobel Peace Prize laureate became president in July. It came amid an international push for peace in the Middle East. AP Photo 

Haaretz | May 5, 2009

By Jack Khoury

President Shimon Peres is urging the government to yield control of key Christian holy sites to the Vatican, a position believed to be opposed by Interior Minister Eli Yishai.

The Vatican’s longstanding demand that Israel transfer sovereignty of key Christian sites to the Holy See has created dissension among senior officials in Jerusalem.

The Interior Ministry has vowed to retain control of the sites, calling relinquishment a “sacrifice” of Israeli sovereignty.

“This matter is under the minister’s authority, and he is not prepared to sacrifice Israeli sovereignty, even if it is only symbolic,” Yishai’s spokesman Roi Rachmanovitch said.

Peres is pressing the government to agree to the Vatican’s request that Israel surrender control of six religious sites, among them the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth; the Coenaculum on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, where Jesus is said to have held the Last Supper; the Gethsemane, which sits at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem; Mount Tabor; and the Church of the Multiplication, which hugs the Kinneret’s shore.

Peres is lobbying Yishai to concede the sites to the Catholic Church, Army Radio reported, but not all officials agree.

“If we were sure that this great gift to the Christian world would bring millions of Christian pilgrims here, then we would have a good reason to think about [agreeing to the demand],” Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov told Army Radio. “But since we are not certain that this will happen, why should we hand out gifts?”

The dispute between Jerusalem and the Holy See threatens to cast a pall over next week’s visit to the Holy Land by Pope Benedict XVI. Vatican officials have made clear they intend to reiterate their demand during the visit that Israel hand over control of the Coenaculum, Army Radio reported.

Prince Charles warns of ‘Dark Age’

It is the first private audience between the Prince of Wales and the head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican since 1985  Photo: REUTERS

Prince Charles warned that the world risked plunging into a “new Dark Age” unless urgent action was taken on climate change, during his first meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican.

Telegraph | Apr 28, 2009

By Nick Squires in Rome

The heir to the throne said the global economic crisis was “nothing” compared with the “horror” of global warming.

Flanked by Swiss Guards in ceremonial uniforms, the Prince of Wales met Benedict for a 15 minute reception in the Pontiff’s private apartments – his first Papal audience since his divorce from Princess Diana and subsequent remarriage.

He was accompanied by his wife Camilla, who wore a black dress and a black lace veil, in keeping with Vatican protocol, and appeared nervous in the presence of the Pope.

The Pontiff, who recently turned 82, has made concern for the environment one of the keynotes of his papacy, regularly calling for more action on global warming and installing solar panels on the roof of the Vatican.

The Prince of Wales gave Pope Benedict 12 ceramic dessert plates decorated with hand-painted flowers from his estate at Highgrove. In return he received a copy of a 500-year-old etching of St. Peter’s.

Earlier the Prince addressed the Italian parliament, telling deputies in a mix of English and Italian that time is running out in the fight against climate change and calling for a “Renaissance” of sustainable living.

Global efforts to halt the damage to the environment would define the present era, he said. “Do we want our children and grandchildren to … see this as the time we allowed a new Dark Age to sprawl across our future?” he asked.