POPE FRANCIS' APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO CHILE AND PERU

Mexican Boy Murdered for His Catholic Beliefs to Become a Saint

Praise the Lord! Another soon-to-be Saint! VIVA CRISTO REY! -CD2000

Source: TeleSUR
Published 15 March 2016
By sh-OA-mk

Jose Sanchez del Rio will be canonized in October this year. | Photo: Cortesía Aciprensa

Jose Sanchez del Rio was tortured and killed by the Mexican government forces for his catholic beliefs.

Pope Francis ruled on Tuesday that Jose Sanchez del Rio, the Mexican boy who was tortured and killed aged 14 in 1928, will be canonized on Oct. 16, this year.

The boy was captured by government forces after he enlisted in the ranks of the Cristeros, who were devout Catholics and struggled against the secularist, anti-Catholic, and anticlerical policies of Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles during the 1924-1928 religious persecution.

According to the fable, Sanchez had the souls of his feet cut off and was forced to walk barefoot to his grave before he was killed. Moments before he was murdered he supposedly shouted “Viva Cristo Rey!” or “Long live Christ the King!”

His character was one of the main protagonists in the 2013 film “For Greater Glory.”

Sanchez was declared a martyr in June 2004 by Pope John Paul II and was beatified (blessed) by Pope Benedict XVI in late 2005 in Mexico.

Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to him in January this year which paved the way for his sainthood.

The pope also announced that Mother Teresa and Argentine priest Jose Gabriel del Rosario Brochero, frequently referred to as the “gaucho priest,” will also become saints in September and October in 2016.

Pope Francis in the USA- Welcome ceremony and visit to the President

Scheduled for Sep 23, 2015

Local time: 9.30/11.00- Pope Francis participates in the Welcome ceremony at the White House and meets the President of the United States of America

Watch it LIVE HERE!

Pope Francis in the USA - Arrival at Washington

All eyes are with Pope Francis in the USA!



Watch also CNN Breaking News!

Huge crowd attended Papal Mass in Havana, Cuba both Religious and non-Religious people

Pope Francis celebrated Mass with tens of thousands of Cubans on Sunday in Havana’s Revolution Square, the political heart of Cuba where the Communist government stages its biggest rallies.

[Source: France24] The huge plaza is where Cubans celebrate May Day beneath massive portraits of revolutionary leaders Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos built into the facades of state buildings.

To welcome the pope, who helped bring about the recent rapprochement between Cuba and the United States, a similarly giant poster of Jesus Christ was hung nearby.

Some waited in the square from 3 a.m.

“Francis has come to bless this new union between Cuba and the United States,” said Enrique Mesa, a 32-year-old tourism worker.

While Cuba’s government basks in the glow of the pope’s four-day visit, he may use the stage to criticize the Communist leaders on democracy and human rights.

Between 30-40 dissidents were detained to stop them attending papal events, a dissident human rights group said.

Security agents wrestled two men and a woman to the ground at the edge of Revolution Square, then led them off, after they started shouting and tried to hand out flyers, a Reuters witness said.

Arriving on Saturday, Francis exhorted Cuba and the United States to deepen their detente, and encouraged Cuba to grant more freedom to the Roman Catholic Church, which has re-emerged as a powerful force after suffering decades of repression.

“His visit is cause for hope in our aspirations for improvement,” said biologist Benito Espinoza, 41, at Revolution Square. “We are an optimistic people, but we have suffered for many years.”

The first Latin American pope, Francis waved and greeted Cubans as he arrived at the Mass, delighting one family when he picked up and kissed a four-year-old girl Karen Correoso.

“It’s a historic moment for her and for us. He blessed her,” said the girl’s aunt, Maria Teresa Gonzalez, 64, from a church in Matanzas city.

Francisco was expected to visit retired leader Fidel Castro, 89, later on Sunday.

Rapprochement

Many Cubans appreciate the pope for his role in the secret talks that led to last December’s breakthrough with Washington, when Cuban President Raul Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama vowed to normalize relations and end more than half a century of Cold War-era animosity.

Francis will fly from Cuba to Washington on Tuesday for meetings with Obama and addresses at the U.S. Congress and United Nations.

Cuba will welcome any papal condemnation of the U.S. economic embargo, which persists despite Obama’s policy change as only the U.S. Congress can lift it. The Republican leadership in Congress has defied Obama’s calls to do so.

But Castro’s government will also be sensitive to any criticism of its one-party political system or repression of dissidents.

Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said most of the 30-40 opposition activists rounded up were in Santa Clara and Havana.

Among them were three dissidents whose detention kept them from a meeting with the pope on Saturday night, said Berta Soler, leader of the dissident group Ladies in White.

Instead of seeing Francis at the Vatican’s diplomatic residence in Havana, Soler said she, Miriam Leyva and Martha Beatriz Roque were in police custody for several hours.

“The Holy Father is not going to change anything in Cuba,” Soler said. “We don’t expect much from Francis because he comes here to talk about political matters between Cuba and the United States, not to resolve anything.”

Although Francis did not overtly criticize the government on Saturday, he did say he would like his greeting “to embrace especially all those who, for various reasons, I will not be able to meet, and to Cubans throughout the world.”

He was clearly referring to Cuban exiles around the world, including the strident anti-communists concentrated in South Florida since the early years after the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro.

Some believed he was also referring to political opponents of Cuba’s government who are in prison.

Cuba denies it holds political prisoners, but one dissident human rights group says as many as 60 are held in Cuban jails.

(REUTERS)

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.

East Tennesseans converting to Catholicism on the rise

By: Melissa Lee

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) -- When you think about religion in East Tennessee, Catholicism probably isn't the first that pops into your mind. That could soon be changing with the Diocese of Knoxville ranked among the top in the nation for conversions.

Georgetown University actually ranked Knoxville 10th in the nation for conversions.

Father David Boettner at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Knoxville says, “When someone converts in the Catholic church, they're not just joining this church or that community, they're joining the universal church throughout the entire world.”

That's part of the reason Father David says more people are becoming attracted to the Catholic faith.

“People realize they're joining something much larger than themselves."

Pope Francis may be another reason. He captured the attention of most of the world, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but doing it in a way some have never heard before.

“He's very approachable and it's easy for people to identify with him, almost like a grandfather that they feel very close to him and he really loves them,” says Father David.

For Dave Wells, it wasn't Pope Francis who impacted his decision to convert.

"I did a lot of reading, I was a History major, I read a lot of church history, a lot of theology, that's kind of what led me to come into the Catholic church,” says Wells.

Wells grew up, like a majority of East Tennesseans in a Protestant church, and says as he got older, was looking for something deeper. In 1996, he was called to the faith.

"It's not something you can do automatically overnight, there's a lot that you have to learn"

In Tennessee where less than 10 percent of people are Catholic and 75 percent are Protestant he says he didn't give anything up.

"I just grew in my understanding of faith."

It's understanding he says he gained through the Catholic church teachings.

Father David says non-Catholics marrying Catholic spouses also has something to do with the increase in people converting to the Catholic faith. Sacred Heart Cathedral opens its doors to the public. They have mass available in Korean, Spanish and Tagalog.

Who says that the Catholic Church is dwindling in the West?

The Iglesia ni Cristo^® founded by a fake messenger with revived Arianism teachings is living in a dream. When a Catholic church (small letter 'c') would go bankrupt, they would conclude that the Catholic Church is "dying" in the West just as this one Minister had claimed before "Ang Iglesia Katolika ay Tuluyan nang Bumagsak sa Kanluran".

But here is the proof that it's not!

A Catholic Cathedral Rises Again in the South

Raleigh’s new cathedral is a testament to a diocese that has rapidly grown in 90 years through faithful evangelization.

by PETER JESSERER SMITH from National Catholic Register

A view of the exterior of the proposed
Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral

RALEIGH, N.C. — Few could have imagined back in 1924 that the newborn Diocese of Raleigh would take root in the soil of North Carolina and become a Catholic powerhouse in the nation’s South.

Ninety years later, and rapidly expanding, the diocese is home to the only Catholic cathedral currently under construction in the United States, a testament to the vibrancy of its people’s faith.

Bishop Michael Burbidge announced the construction of Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral at a press conference in May.

Noting the rapid growth of the diocese, the bishop said it is his “hope, dream and prayer to build a mother church, to build a cathedral” to replace the existing Sacred Heart Cathedral in downtown Raleigh.

Sacred Heart Cathedral has a capacity of 320 people and was originally completed in 1924, when the Catholic population of the state was just 6,000. Today, however, the cathedral has burst its seams, serving a parish base of 3,000 Catholics in a diocese that is home to almost half a million Catholics, or 4.8% of the state’s population.

“We have people literally out in the street,” the bishop said, pointing out that Christmas and Easter celebrations see typically 13-14 Masses, with overflow locations at the cathedral-school basement and local Clarion hotel unable to serve the influx of worshippers.

Bishop Burbidge told reporters that the cathedral helps the bishop “gather the faithful of the diocese to worship as one.”

Habemus Papam! We have a New Pope!

Praise and Glory to the One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit for giving us our new Pope.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina is now known as POPE FRANCIS I.

LONG LIVE THE POPE!