With this final event, my Visit to Pavia acquires the form of a pilgrimage ... desiring to come here to venerate the mortal remains of St Augustine, to express both the homage of the whole Catholic Church to one of her greatest "fathers" and my personal devotion and gratitude to the one who played such an important part in my life as a theologian and a Pastor, but, I would say, even more as a man and a priest.
The month of May began several days ago. For many Christian communities this is the Marian month par excellence.
Benedict XVI is supporting a campaign asking that poor nations' development be a priority on the agenda at the G-8 summit in Germany.
The worlds of science and faith had a chance to meet during a seminar held in the Vatican on the subject of climate change. On April 26-27 the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace hosted a gathering of scientists, politicians, theologians and bishops on the theme "Climate Change and Development." Auxiliary Bishop Uhl of Freiburg, Germany, spoke about Catholic social teaching as related to climate issues.
Those damn harlots...
A boom in evangelical Protestantism is steadily chipping away at the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church. The trend, which is playing out all across Latin America, poses a major challenge for Pope Benedict, who arrives in Brazil on May 9 for a 5-day visit largely aimed at blunting the decline of Catholicism in this continent-sized nation.
A troublingly inaccurate exhibit at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel about the role of Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church during Hitler's persecution of the Jews sparks a diplomatic incident. Why?
After refusing to station 19 German troops to Afghanistan's volatile south, the defense ministry confirmed 6 soldiers would be sent to the region for up to a month, but said they would not be part of combat missions.
The continent is making a comeback, big time, led by Germany and its Chancellor Angela Merkel. She is, in her quiet way, the new Tony Blair.
EU members turn on one another, all for the better.
Nicolas Sarkozy will succeed Jacques Chirac as president of France on May 16. The leader of the right-wing Union for a Popular Movement won yesterday's presidential election with 53% of the vote. His opponent, Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal, received 47%. At 85%, voter turnout was amongst the highest ever recorded. Sarkozy's ascent to the highest office in the state marks a shift to the right in French domestic and foreign policy.
(BBC: Sarkozy pledges unity)
(IHT: Sarkozy vows break with past)
(LT op/ed: A victory for France)
(LX op/ed: A vote for change)
(DW op/ed: Sarkozy win means European uncertainty)
Here we go again...
Hard-line nationalists gathered in this city Saturday with a plan to "save Kosovo" as a part of Serbia. But there was a shadow of the paramilitary groups that caused untold trouble in the 1990s. Dozens of veterans of the Balkan wars of that decade pledged allegiance to a new paramilitary force willing to fight and die to prevent Kosovo from breaking away into a new entity dominated by its ethnic Albanian majority.
Ehud Olmert decided yesterday not to sack his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, even though last week she called on him to resign for his mishandling of last year's war in Lebanon. He took the view that sacking her would create unnecessary turmoil at a time when he remains politically weak, and so, in a remarkable display of accommodating a political foe, he resolved to carry on working with Miss Livni.
The former Israeli prime minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu has emerged as the frontrunner to succeed Ehud Olmert. A close friend of Netanyahu said: "He won't wait too long to attack Iran."
Germany's Foreign Minister urged Middle East players and the international community to seize what he called a rare opportunity for peace.
The Real War in Iraq and the Middle East is between Iran and Germany on one side and Russia and France on the other. Germany is Iran's leading European ally and the largest world contributor of tchnology to Iranian weaspons programs. Fance on the other hand is Iran's primary target and is confronting Iran in Lebanon and Algeria. France is a front
line state against Iran, whereas Germay is Iran's partner.
line state against Iran, whereas Germay is Iran's partner.
[WAR: As I've stated before: An attack on Iran is an indirect attack/declaration-of-war on Germany. This will finally turn Germany against the US and eventually lead to Germany being forced to pull-off an EMP attack above Oklahoma City to stop the US. Speakin' of which: "(The US) has also supplied nuclear weapons to some non-nuclear members of NATO, chiefly Germany..." Could Germany use one of these? Or could there be some kind of covert operation with the US - ala OKC - whereby Germany ends-up with a "loose" nuke? Stay tuned ... and get an Amish "how to" book ...]
A 130-nation meeting on how to fix the fraying nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty faces collapse on Monday unless Iran accepts a last-minute South African proposal to overcome its objections to the agenda.
Senator McCain has hit upon a solution to all the Republican party's woes: a nuclear war with Iran.
Republican presidential hopefuls lambasted Iran in their first head-to-head debate Thursday, with the Islamic Republic accused of launching a "nightmare" quest for nuclear weapons.
KG3 welcomes QE2...
"The United States has no closer ally and friend than Great Britain," the White House said in a statement detailing the tightly-coordinated protocol for the royal visit.
Blair's departure - he is expected to announce Thursday the schedule for his last weeks in office - has been undermined by a seismic shift in British politics. His resignation will close an era in which Britain has fought a string of wars, enjoyed relative prosperity, remained aloof from Europe and aligned its destiny with that of the US far more than at any time since WW2.
(LX op/ed: Is Britain becoming ungovernable?)
We now focus our attention on the sinister but almost universally Beloved figure of Dr. Henry Kissinger, a lifelong spokesman, counselor, and servitor of the Rockefeller World Empire. Kissinger is so Beloved, in fact, that whenever he appears on Nightline or Crossfire he appears alone, since it seems to be lese majesté (or even blasphemy) for anyone to contradict the Great One's banal and ponderous Teutonic pronouncements.
American farmers face a make-or-break summer as the honeybee population struggles to recover from a mysterious killer that threatens to destroy crops and deplete the nation's dinner plates.
The dollar fell in Asia today as weak US jobs data released late last week raised expectations of lower US interest rates.
Investors are dumping dollars, lured by higher returns elsewhere. The difference in yield between 10-year German bonds and Treasuries has shrunk to the smallest since 2004. "When the euro gains, people in Europe get nervous that it's going to hurt employment."
A must read!...
The rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly – and get fat. This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market.
A must read!...
What if you ate only food entirely raised or produced within 100 miles of your house? Could you manage? Our way of life has become dangerously unbalanced and disconnected from the natural world. Something has gone seriously wrong when we can't say where something as basic as our food comes from ("the supermarket" is a non-answer) and when we have to ship it in from thousands of miles away – even when we could raise it locally.
The 40th year, however, keeps popping up as the start of life's transition from youth to age. "Life Begins at Forty" was Walter Pitkin's 1932 book, and the upbeat phrase remains part of the language no matter how old the population gets.
For a quarter-century Roy Abraham Varghese has been assembling God proofs. Along the way he won over the world's most influential atheist.
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