TIME: Pope Francis and the New Roman Empire

Pope Francis waves to the crowd as he arrives in Bosnia
and Herzegovina for a Mass in 2015. (Time.com)

[Source: TIME]- From Cuba to climate change, he has revitalized the Vatican’s role in global diplomacy. Now he’s bringing his activist agenda to the U.S.

History sometimes turns on little things– a single bullet, a spy’s blurry photograph–and on Aug. 25, 2014, Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino of Havana arrived at the White House to deliver one such object. Ortega had gone to great lengths to cover his tracks. His name does not appear in official White House visitor logs, and he had even arranged an event at Georgetown University that day to explain his presence in the capital. When he arrived at the West Wing he was quickly shown to a secluded patio outside the Oval Office, where President Barack Obama, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and two other top aides greeted him.

After dispensing with the formalities, the Cardinal took out a letter from Pope Francis to Obama. Ortega informed the Americans that he had delivered the same message days earlier in person to Cuban President Raúl Castro. And then Ortega began to read the Pope’s words out loud. Francis expressed his support for diplomatic talks the U.S. and Cuba had secretly been pursuing in an effort to end a half-century of hostility. He encouraged the two nations to resolve the issue of prisoners, a key sticking point in negotiations. And he offered the Vatican’s assistance to help the two countries overcome their decades of distrust and confrontation.

Francis’ letter was as simple as that, but it made a difference. Two months later, Obama and Castro took Francis up on his offer, dispatching top officials to the privacy of the Vatican for a five-hour session in which they hammered out the details of an agreement to restore full diplomatic relations. And when Obama and Castro sealed the historic deal by telephone on Dec. 16, 2014, they found common ground expressing their gratitude to the Pope. Most important, the Pope’s letter offered symbolic shelter for both sides as they weighed the political costs of reconciliation. Francis’ popularity as a religious figure in the U.S. gave Obama cover as he cut a deal with godless communists across the Straits of Florida, while the Pope’s credibility as a Latin American shielded Castro as he got in bed with Yankee capitalists. “[The Cubans] were very clear with us that they saw Pope Francis as different from previous Popes,” says Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, who was present at the meeting with Ortega and the talks in Rome, “because of his stature as the first Pope from Latin America.”

That difference will be on full display when Francis arrives in Cuba on Sept. 19, ahead of a five-day historic visit to the U.S., and it is key to understanding not just who he is but how he is leading the Vatican on the world stage 30 months into his reign. Francis, 78, rose to prominence as a church leader in the unruly world of Latin American politics of the 1960s and 1970s, and his life and outlook are the products of the developing world. He has never been to the U.S., and his only papal trip to a developed Western country so far was a four-hour stopover in France, the shortest ever by a Pope. Instead he has focused on his spiritual base, traveling almost exclusively to so-called Global South nations, including Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Bolivia and Brazil.

That perspective has infused Vatican diplomacy under Francis with the same paradoxical mix of humility and influence that have defined his papacy so far. Nearly a year after Ortega’s visit, Francis shrugged off his role in the U.S.-Cuba rapprochement, even as he credited divine inspiration for his own part in the talks’ successful outcome. “What could I do with these two who have been going on like this for more than 50 years?” he asked reporters on a return flight from Paraguay to Rome in July. “Then the Lord made me think of a Cardinal, and he went there and talked,” Francis said. “We did hardly anything, only small things.”

But Francis’ small things are proving to be a big deal for the rest of the world. Coaxing U.S.-Cuban reconciliation is just the start: the Pope is making the Holy See a player in the most pressing global issues in a way unseen since the early days of Pope John Paul II. From the outset of his papacy he has drawn attention to the Mediterranean migrant crisis, and in early September he called on Catholic dioceses, including parishes in the Vatican, to house refugee families. Francis routinely speaks out about the persecution of Christians in Syria and Iraq as he pushes for action to end the wars there. He praised the controversial nuclear deal between Iran, the U.S. and five other world powers. His 180-page encyclical on the environment has been called “radical” by one prominent environmentalist and has helped make Francis a perceived front runner for the Nobel Peace Prize. And the State Department has asked the Vatican for help on relocating prisoners from the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that it can be closed, a top Obama priority, senior Administration officials tell TIME. Secretary of State John Kerry “early on saw Francis as a potentially activist foreign policy Pope,” says one senior State official.

Communist Cuba thanks Pope Francis for warming and building up relationship between Cuba and US, President thinks converting to the Catholic Church

For the record, there are NO MEMBERS of the Iglesia Ni Cristo® of Manalo in Cuba to this date (2015 May).  Iglesians or Manalistas are known to go to places with much Catholics and inject their anti-Catholic and anti-Christ copied Arianism.  INC™ paid ministers are like parasites living only through their victim host in order to survive, otherwise Manalo's church can never survive.

With the advent of opening up the doors of Cuba to the world, and with the strong presence of the Catholic Church there, I am hundred per cent sure that Manalo would be sending INC™ members to Havana first as migrant workers.  Watch my prophetic statement!

Cuban President Raul Castro and Pope Francis (Source: The Guardian)

President of Cuba, where crackdowns on dissidents have drawn Vatican criticism, says he is so impressed with pontiff that he is considering converting to Catholicism

The Guardian - The Cuban president, Raúl Castro, has thanked Pope Francis for helping to broker the diplomatic thaw between his country and the US, saying he was so impressed with the pontiff he was even considering converting to Catholicism.

“Bienvenido!” said Francis in his native Spanish as he welcomed Castro to his studio near the Vatican’s public audience hall for private talks that lasted nearly an hour.

After leaving the Vatican, Castro, the brother of Fidel, the revolutionary leader who brought the Communists to power in Cuba, gushed with praise for Francis.

“If the pope keeps going the way he’s going, I’ll come back to the Catholic church,” Castro said at a news conference at the office of the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, whom he met after the Vatican talks.

“When the pope goes to Cuba in September, I promise to go to all his masses, and with satisfaction.”

It was a startling assertion for the leader of a communist country, where crackdowns on dissidents in the past had drawn sharp Vatican criticism.

“I am from the Cuban Communist party, that doesn’t allow [religious] believers, but now we are allowing it, it’s an important step,” Castro said.

Speaking about Francis, the Cuban president said he had been “very impressed by his wisdom, his modesty, and all his virtues that we know he has”.

Francis played a key role in secret negotiations between the US and Cuba, which led to the surprise announcement in December that the two countries would seek to restore diplomatic ties after more than 50 years of tensions.

“Raúl Castro thanked the pope for his mediation between Cuba and the United States,” Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said of the exchange, which also focused on the pontiff’s forthcoming visit to Cuba.

Castro gave Francis an artwork of a cross made up of relics from wrecked barges depicting a migrant in prayer, and a medal of Havana Cathedral. The pope presented a copy of his Apostolic Exhortation – a document which outlines his views on important issues – and a medallion.

Castro’s Vatican visit, announced only on Tuesday, follows a visit to Russia, where the Cuban leader attended a grandiose second world war victory parade on Saturday.

The Vatican announced last month that Pope Francis would visit Cuba in September, becoming only the third pontiff to do so after John Paul II in 1998 and Benedict XVI in 2012.

The Catholic church has consistently backed calls for the lifting of the US trade embargo against Cuba, while staunchly supporting Cuban Catholics and pressuring Havana to release political prisoners, many of whom are Catholic activists.

Francis will go on from Cuba to the US for a meeting with President Barack Obama.

Castro told reporters: “We are trying to carry forward improvements of our political, social and cultural system. But it’s very difficult to do it without causing shocks, without leaving some in the street.”

DR. ALBERT EINSTEIN EXTOLLED THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AS THE LONE VOICE AGAINST HITLER

By The Splendor of the Church

Albert Einstein, addressing the Catholic Church’s role during the Holocaust, said the following:

“Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks… “Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.” DR. ALBERT EINSTEIN [December 23, 1940 issue of Time magazine on page 38.]

Einstein: The Church alone stood for intellectual truth and moral freedom
By: Mary Meets Dolly

The Church today still stands for intellectual truth and moral freedom. Although the propaganda that surrounds us says otherwise. But it is the Church that speaks for the human embryo that is frozen, sold, discarded or torn apart for harvestable biological material. It is the Church that reminds us that we all began our lives as small as the period at the end of this sentence and our size does not diminish our worth. It is the Church that stands firm against the creation and manipulation of human life in the laboratory. It is the Church that speaks out against the seek-and-destroy mission going on in the womb against those that are not deemed "genetically fit." The truth is that when the Church stands for the embryo and fetus, it stands for the inherent dignity in every human life regardless of DNA or point of development.

The Nazi's dehumanized the Jews and other "undesirables" and the Church stood for them, however imperfectly. Now the Church is nearly alone in standing for the youngest and most voiceless members of our species. Those that many have gone to great lengths to insist are not human. We know better. I pray that those who despise the Church today will see in the future what the Church has done to protect the most vulnerable and innocent of lives and will praise it unreservedly as Einstein did.

Catholic Church leads the World for Peace at Assisi

At Assisi the Catholic Church of  Christ will again invite leaders of different faiths to commit themselves to PEACE. Some 300 participants came (of course NOT ALL the "churches of Christ" (mga iglesia ni Cristo) greet the Church of Rome -Romans 16:16).  The Holy Father clearly stated “Violence never again! War never again! Terrorism never again! In the name of God, may every religion bring upon the earth Justice and Peace, Forgiveness and Life, Love.” And so we commit. - CD2000

Assisi 2011: 300 lights for peace and freedom

Assisi (AsiaNews) – The Day of Reflection, Dialogue and Prayer for Peace and Justice in the World ended in the simplest and most poetic way, with an exchange of peace among participants. This was preceded by the lighting of small lamps that a group of young people handed out in silence to the 300 representatives who had come to Assisi on Benedict XVI’s invitation.

The Day ended in a square near St Francis’s basilica, where the 1986 edition had been celebrated. Unlike previous editions, there was no public prayer, either in group, separately or in sequence, but only minutes of silence before the lighting of the lamps, accompanied by the sound of harps. Every participant, as someone said, was able “to invoke the gift of peace or express hope for it in his or her innermost conscience.”

The lights are a token of the responsibility everyone undertook in front of the others and God. In introducing the sign of peace, Card Koch, head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said, “Let us become tools of the peace that comes from high above. Let us remember that there is no peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness. Let us seal with a gesture of peace among us the commitment to peace proclaimed by the many. Let us bring peace to those near us and those far from us, to all creatures and creation.”