Pat Robertson Blames Ivy League Schools for Lack of Miracles in America

It may have been April 1st yesterday, but televangelist Pat Robertson wasn’t kidding when he told a viewer that Americans aren’t experiencing God’s miracles because they are too “sophisticated.”

Why do miracles “happen with great frequency in Africa, and not here in the USA?” asked a 700 Club patron Ken. “People overseas didn’t go to Ivy League schools,” Robertson replied with a chuckle.

We are so sophisticated, we think we’ve got everything figured out,” the Christian Broadcasting Network chairman continued. “We know about evolution, we know about Darwin, we know about all these things that says God isn’t real, we know about all this stuff.”

According to Robertson, it’s the “skepticism and secularism” that is being taught at “the most advanced schools” around the country that is keeping God’s miracles at bay.

Meanwhile, Africans are “simple” and “humble.” “You tell ‘em God loves ‘em and they say, ‘Okay, he loves me’,” said Robertson. “You say God will do miracles and they say, ‘Okay, we believe him’.”

If Americans wish to experience more miracle, Robertson concluded, they must reject their miracle-negating sophistication in favor of the more credulous African way of life.

 

 

 

SOURCE-gawker

Pope washes prisoners’ feet in unprecedented Easter rite

Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 young offenders including two girls and two Muslims at a Rome prison on Thursday in an unprecedented version of an ancient Easter ritual, seen as part of efforts to bring the Catholic Church closer to those in need.

The pope knelt down, washing and kissing the young prisoners’ feet in the first Holy Thursday ceremony of its kind performed by a pontiff in prison, and the first to include women and Muslims.

Pope Francis (R) kissing the feet of a young offender after washing them during a mass at the church of the Casal del Marmo youth prison on the outskirts of Rome as part of Holy Thursday.AFP

“Whoever is the most high up must be at the service of others,” Francis said at the mass in the Casal del Marmo youth prison, a fortnight after being elected Latin America’s first pope.

“I do this with all my heart because it is my duty as a priest, as a bishop. I have to be at your service. I love doing it because this is what the Lord has taught me,” the 76-year-old said.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said many of the participants broke down in tears at the ceremony, which was open only to Vatican media. One young man had to be replaced at the last moment because he was too overcome with emotion.

Video footage from the ceremony showed the pope pouring water over the feet — one of them with tattoos — bending down to kiss them and looking each of the 12 prisoners in the eye before moving on.

Lombardi said that while this was the first time a pope had washed women’s feet, Francis had performed this type of ceremony in his native Argentina many times before becoming pope including in jails, hospitals and old people’s homes.

The Holy Thursday ceremony is usually held in a basilica in the city centre and commemorates the gesture of humility believed to have been performed by Jesus Christ before his death to his 12 disciples at their last meal.

Popes performing the ritual have usually washed the feet of priests.

Catholic traditionalists are likely to be riled by the inclusion of women because all of Jesus’ disciples were male — the same justification used to explain why only men can be Catholic priests.

Francis has already broken with several Vatican traditions with his informal style, although he is yet to begin tackling the many problems assailing the Roman Catholic Church including reform of the scandal-ridden Vatican bureaucracy and bank.

Local prison chaplain Gaetano Greco said he hoped the ritual would be “a positive sign in the lives” of the young offenders at the prison, which has around 50 inmates aged between 14 and 21.

Earlier on Thursday, the pontiff told Catholic priests at a mass in St Peter’s Basilica to stop their “soul-searching” and “introspection”.

“We need to go out… to the outskirts where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters,” he said.

– Via Crucis –

The former archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was known in Argentina for his strong social advocacy during his homeland’s devastating economic crisis, his own humble lifestyle and his outreach in poor neighbourhoods.

Holy Thursday is the first of four intensive days in the Christian calendar culminating in Easter Sunday, which commemorates Christ’s resurrection.

On Friday, Francis will recite the Passion of Christ — the story of the last hours of Jesus’s life — in St Peter’s Basilica, before presiding over the Via Crucis — Way of the Cross — ceremony by the Colosseum, where thousands of Christians were believed killed in Roman times.

While a frail Benedict, now 85, presided over last year’s celebrations from under a canopy next to the Colosseum, Francis is expected to take part in the procession and even carry the wooden cross on his shoulder for part of the way.

On Saturday, the pontiff will take part in an evening Easter vigil in St Peter’s Basilica. The Vatican has not yet said whether Francis will follow the tradition of baptising eight adult converts to the Catholic Church during the service.

On Sunday the Vatican’s first non-European pope in nearly 1,300 years

A closer look at the first few days of Pope Francis, the “casual pope” who takes the bus and pays his own bills

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, described his wardrobe selection as “definitely a choice of simplicity.” It was less clear, though, whether the new pope would continue to refuse the Vatican One limo. “Whether this habit will stick remains to be seen,” Lombardi said.

After a papacy that saw Benedict criticized as insensitive by some members of other faiths, Francis appeared to be trying to build early bridges. On Saturday, he dispatched a note to Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome.

 

Trusting in the protection of the Most High, I strongly hope to be able to contribute to the progress of the relations that have existed between Jews and Catholics since Vatican Council II in a spirit of renewed collaboration and in service of a world that may always be more in harmony with the Creator’s will,” he wrote.

Francis brought with him an image of simplicity from Buenos Aires, where he was known for living in modest quarters and keeping his own appointment book. On Saturday, during his first encounter with the international news media as pope, he appeared surprisingly informal, seeming almost uncomfortable as the center of attention in his brilliant white robes.

As a select number of journalists and Vatican officials approached him for a blessing, he occasionally lifted them up from the traditional kneeling position in order to give them a hug and a kiss. Francis earned several rounds of laughter from the audience with his unscripted remarks. At other times, he appeared to move those present with his candor.

At one point, Francis, the first pope from the Jesuit order, joked that some had suggested he should embrace the title of Clement XV as revenge against Clement XIV, an 18th-century pope who had repressed the Jesuits.

In other unscripted remarks, he directly addressed the lack of clarity over his selection of Francis as his papal name. He noted that many wanted to know whether he had named himself after Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Francis Xavier or Saint Francis of Assisi.

As his selection became more and more likely during the conclave last week, the pope explained, he had been seated next to a dear friend, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, a Brazilian archbishop emeritus.

“When the matter became dangerous, he comforted me,” the pope told the news media. And when it became clear a new pope had been chosen, Hummes “embraced me and kissed me and said: ‘Don’t forget the poor.’ And that struck me. The poor. Immediately, I thought of Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis was a man of peace, a man of poverty, a man who loved and protected creation.”

So, the new pope said, he took the name after Saint Francis of Assisi to show “how I would love a church that is poor and for the poor.”

 

 

 

 

washingtonpost

Argentina Reacts To New Pope: Catholics Celebrate Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio As Francis I (PHOTOS)

Pope Francis 1

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Latin Americans reacted with joy, bursting into tears and cheers on Wednesday at news that an Argentine cardinal has become the first pope from the hemisphere.

“It’s incredible!” said Martha Ruiz, 60, who was weeping tears of emotion after learning that the cardinal she knew as Jorge Mario Bergoglio will now be Pope Francis.

She said she had been in many meetings with the cardinal and said, “He is a man who transmits great serenity.”

Cars honked their horns as the news spread and television announcers screamed with elation and surprise and Catholics began flooding toward the cathedral, where Ana Maria Perez and a few dozen other women had been waiting for the announcement.

“He is going to be the pope of the street,” she said, referring to Bergoglio’s habit of taking the subways alongside working class Argentines.

There was excitement as well elsewhere.

At the St. Francis of Assisi church in the colonial Old San Juan district in Puerto Rico, church secretary Antonia Veloz exchanged jubilant high-fives with Jose Antonio Cruz, a Franciscan friar.

Cruz said he personally favored the Brazilian candidate, but was pleased with the outcome, saying the new pope would help revitalize the church.

“It’s a huge gift for all of Latin America. We waited 20 centuries. It was worth the wait,” said Cruz, wearing the brown cassock tied with a rope that is the signature of the Franciscan order. “Everyone from Canada down to Patagonia is going to feel blessed. This is an event.”

This is something exciting,” the 50-year-old Veloz said of the new Argentine pope. “I’m speechless.” In Santo Domingo, the bells pealed in the city’s main cathedral in the colonial district.

In Panama City, public relations executive Nelsa Aponte said with teary eyes, “This made me cry, I had to get out my handkerchief.”

“We have a new pastor, and for the first time, he is from Latin America.”

Armando Connell, 54, a doorman at a luxury hotel in Panama City, expressed hope that “the new pope will be closer to us, and will show more concern about the poverty many of us suffer.”

In Mexico City, pediatrician Victor De la Rosa, 64, said the decision “is going to allow Latin America to be more involved in the church’s decisions, above all in modernizing the church.

PHOTO’S

A woman prays inside the Metropolitan Cathedral in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, March 13, 2013.

People pray inside the Metropolitan Cathedral in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, March 13, 2013.

People pray next to a figure of Jesus Christ after attending a Mass inside the Metropolitan Cathedral in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, March 13, 2013.

A man prays inside the Metropolitan Cathedral in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, March 13, 2013.

A faithful prays at the Toledo’s Cathedral, where Brazilian Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer worked as a priest in Toledo, Brazil, Wednesday, March 13, 2013.

 

 

Huffingtonpost

Jorge Marion Bergoglio elected Pope Francis

Jorge Marion Bergoglio, from Argentina, has been elected as the first Pope from the Americas and is named Pope Francis after white smoke billows from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel and the bells toll from St Peter’s basilica.

The election came on the first full day of voting by the 115 cardinal-electors, who secluded themselves behind the Vatican’s medieval walls on Tuesday afternoon – more quickly than many had expected.

On a cold and drizzly night in the Vatican City, the tension was broken after five voting sessions, with the arrival of white smoke from the chimney on the top of the Sistine Chapel.

Hundreds of people sprinted up the Grand Avenue towards St Peter’s Square.

They’ve decided, they’ve decided!” one woman screamed in joy. Many others shouted “Habemus Papam!” (“We have a pope!”).

As the smoke billowed out, the bells of St Peter’s basilica began tolling.

Morning smoke at around 11.30am Italian time (10.30am GMT) on Wednesday was black – signalling that the second vote had again produced no two thirds majority for any one candidate.

The evening smoke at around 7pm local time (6pm GMT) showed white smoke.

The new Pope emerged from the loggia overlooking St. Peter’s Square to deliver his first words as the Bishop of Rome.

^{Black smoke indicating the College of Cardinals had failed to elect a new Pope in the morning}

White smoke – produced by mixing the smoke from burning ballots with special flares – indicated that a new head of the Roman Catholic Church had been chosen.

Elected on the fifth ballot, he was chosen in one of the fastest conclaves in years, remarkable given there was no clear front-runner going into the vote and that the church had been in turmoil following the upheaval unleashed by Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise resignation.

A winner must receive 77 votes, or two-thirds of the 115, to be named pope.

^{Faithful in St Peter’s Square watch out for puffs of smoke}

 

^{The crowd reacts after black smoke billowed from the chimney}

In interviews given before the conclave, cardinals pointed to new job requirements arising from the problems facing a Church that is struggling in many parts of the world with scandals, indifference and conflict.

“Managerial skills will surely be useful,” Vienna Archbishop Christoph Schoenborn told La Stampa.

What many cardinals want is a leader who can reignite Catholic faith – particularly among young people – in the way the charismatic John Paul II did.

There have been calls too from within the Church for a rethink of some basic tenets such as priestly celibacy, the uniform ban on artificial contraception and even allowing women to be priests as in other Christian denominations.

The scandal of sexual abuse of children by paedophile priests going back decades – and the cover-up of their actions by senior prelates – also cast a long shadow on the Church that the next pope will inherit.

And in a reminder of the relentless pace of the scandal, new details emerged implicating one of the cardinals, Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony, accused of protecting predator priests.

Lawyers said on Tuesday that the archdiocese had agreed to pay nearly $10 million (750,000 euros) to four men who alleged they were molested by a former priest in the 1970s.

“Cardinal Mahony’s fingerprints were all over the case,” lawyer Vince Finaldi told the Los Angeles Times.

Mahony – whom victims’ groups had urged to stay away from the conclave – retired as Los Angeles archbishop and was stripped of church duties by his successor for mishandling claims against dozens of priests.

The cardinals on Tuesday filed into the chapel, chanting a Latin hymn to ask for divine guidance and swearing a solemn oath never to reveal the secrets of their deliberations on pain of excommunication.

^{Cardinals attend a mass on Tuesday before the start of the conclave}

The “Princes of the Church” were cut off from any contact with the outside world for the duration of the conclave. They ate and sleep in a Vatican residence on Tuesday night where windows were locked shut and phones were for internal use only.

Modern-day conclaves normally last no more than a few days. Benedict’s election in 2005 following the death of John Paul II took just two days.

The tradition of holding conclaves – literally “with key” in Latin – dates back to 1268 when cardinals were locked into the papal palace in Viterbo near Rome by an angry crowd because they were taking too long to choose a pope.

Their conclave still dragged on for nearly three years, despite townspeople tearing off the roof of the palace and feeding them only bread and water.

 

 

 

UK telegraph