Pope Francis

ROME — Pope Francis on Tuesday reiterated his opposition to gay priests, allegedly repeating a highly pejorative slur in an encounter with clerics just two weeks after the Vatican issued an apology amid reports that he had used the same word in an earlier meeting with bishops.

Francis reportedly repeated the slur in a meeting with 200 priests at Rome’s Salesian Pontifical University, according to major Italian outlets. The Vatican, in a statement, did not mention use of the derogatory word but said the pontiff had spoken of the “danger of ideologies in the Church.”

Scheming cardinals are sharpening their knives

The cardinals are already meeting to discuss who should be the next pope. Some of the liberal ones, who feel safe because they’re in favour with the ailing Pope Francis, can be seen comparing notes in a bar near the gates of the Vatican. The conservative cardinals are more nervous: they gather at suppers in each other’s apartments or — if they can trust the fawning waiters not to betray them — in a favourite restaurant.

Pope Francis overcame concerns about his health to preside over Easter Sunday Mass, leading some 30,000 people in a flower-decked St. Peter’s Square in one of the most important liturgies of the year.

Just hours after celebrating the 2½-hour nighttime Easter Vigil, the 87-year-old Francis appeared in good form at the start of the liturgy in the blustery piazza.

Francis, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, has been battling respiratory problems all winter that the Vatican and he have said were bronchitis, the flu or a cold.

ROME — An unnamed cardinal, after consulting a number of other prelates and summarizing their reflections, has published a sharp critique of the Francis pontificate and a proposal for moving forward.

The 1400-word text, published this week by the Catholic news site The Daily Compass under the title “A profile of the next Pope,” expresses deep concern over the fallout from the nearly 11-year pontificate of Pope Francis.

The pope’s ten predecessors knew that Marxism was radically incompatible with Catholicism.

In a Vatican reception on Wednesday, Pope Francis encouraged a Marxist-Christian dialogue group, urging them to keep “dreaming of a better world” and to have “the courage to step outside the box” to create “new paths” for humanity through collaboration.

The Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Alvarez of Matagalpa was unavailable for comment, as his country’s Marxist government has thrown him in prison on trumped-up treason charges. Similarly, Chinese bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Zhejiang could not be located for reaction, as the Communist authorities in his country hauled him to jail on January 2nd.

Pope Francis is not known for being the most conservative Roman Catholic pontiff. His recent condemnation of the international rent-a-womb industry, however, proves you don’t have to be a conservative or even religious powerhouse to agree that surrogacy is an evil practice that harms women and children.

December 18th saw the publication of the doctrinal document Fiducia Supplicans by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith which comes out in favour of the blessing of homosexual couples. Since then, opposition has been mounting to a document that—by deliberately fostering confusion—appears to be a major reversal of the moral doctrine hitherto in force within the Catholic Church.

Some of Pope Francis’s closest allies in the Catholic Church are alleged to have secretly given more than €2 million to an Italian migrant rescue charity whose senior staff are charged with people smuggling. They include Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, archbishop of Bologna, who is among other things the papal peace envoy to Ukraine, and Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, archbishop of Luxembourg. These senior figures in the Church organized payment of the money, it is claimed, at the bequest of the Pope who had established a special rapport with the far-left founder of the charity. The payments were kept secret for fear of adverse publicity.

The Pope has called for an end to the war in Gaza and for the freeing of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

In his traditional Christmas Day message, Pope Francis also called for more aid to Gaza in order to solve a “desperate humanitarian situation”.

The war between Israel and Hamas began on 7 October, when Hamas gunmen attacked Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking some 240 hostage.

ROME — Pope Francis sent a message Saturday to the COP28 United Nations climate summit decrying the “unbridled exploitation” of the environment by first world nations.

Climate change “greatly endangers all human beings,” the pontiff said in his sternly worded address, and “time is short” to react to the current ecological crisis.

In a November letter to Brazilian Bishop José Negri, Pope Francis laid out rules for transgender and LGBT engagement in the Catholic church.

Bishop Negri had asked the pontiff several questions on how the church should respond to transgender and homosexual-identifying individuals.

Under the pope’s new clarifications of rules for the church, some “transsexual” Catholics are allowed to be baptized, become godparents to children, and act as witnesses at weddings.