Police send “holy” Roman robber to Queen of Heaven jail
Italian police have found a fitting temporary home for an accused jewellery robber whose priestly disguise failed to help him slip past their dragnet.
Police said they tracked down and arrested the 37-year-old male suspect by reviewing closed circuit television footage around Via del Corso and Via Condotti, the swanky shopping district near the Spanish Steps, after a July 4th hold-up at one of Rome’s most prestigious jewellery shops.
Video footage released by Italian police showed a man dressed in the floor-length black cassock and round, wide brimmed black hat commonly worn by priests of the Roman Catholic Church until the 1960s and still favoured by traditionalists.
The footage showed the man was carrying a shopping bag and moving confidently through a crowd of shoppers after the heist, in which two employees were locked in a bathroom.
Police have detained the suspect in the Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven) jail on the Tiber River not far from the pope’s Vatican headquarters.
via Police send holy Roman robber to Queen of Heaven | Oddly Enough | Reuters.
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Rome’s Pope John Paul statue slammed by critics, including Vatican daily
An unconventional new statue of the late Pope John Paul II, showing a giant hollowed out figure, has attracted harsh criticism from experts and the Vatican newspaper. The inauguration of the imposing bronze sculpture by Oliviero Rainaldi outside Rome’s central rail station was meant to round off celebrations to mark the beatification of John Paul, which moves him a major step closer to sainthood.
The statue is a representation of the pope opening his cloak with a welcoming, outstretched arm. But the four meter (yard) high figure provoked dismay and angry reactions from newspapers and art critics, who say it fails to capture the essence of the man.
“The face bears only scant resemblance to the pope. And altogether the result does not seem up to scratch,” the official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano said, comparing it to a tent or a military sentry box. Art critic Achille Bonito Oliva told La Repubblica daily that the harsh edges of the sculpture had left him perplexed and did not reflect John Paul’s gentle, caring nature. But he added “we’ll get used to it over time.”
Rainaldi said he had not aimed for the sculpture to resemble John Paul exactly but wanted to capture the Polish pontiff’s welcoming nature. He told Il Messaggero daily that he had portrayed the pope the way he remembered him. After the wave of criticism, Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno said changes could be made.
John Paul died in 2005 and his path to sainthood has been given fast-track treatment by his successor Pope Benedict. A beatification ceremony earlier this month attracted the largest crowd in Rome since his funeral six years ago.
via Pope John Paul statue slammed by critics.
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Pope John Paul beatified before huge crowd at the Vatican
The late Pope John Paul moved a major step closer to sainthood on Sunday at a ceremony that drew about a million and half people, the largest crowd in Rome since his funeral six years ago. “From now on Pope John Paul shall be called ‘blessed,’” Pope Benedict, wearing white and gold robes, proclaimed in Latin, establishing that his predecessor’s feast day would be October 22, the day of the inauguration of John Paul’s pontificate in 1978.
To the cheers of the crowd, a tapestry showing a smiling John Paul was unveiled after Benedict read the proclamation. St Peter’s Square was packed and the crowd stretched as far back as the Tiber River, more than half a km away. The devotees, many carrying national flags and singing, moved toward the Vatican area from all directions from before dawn to get a good spot for the Mass.
Police estimated the crowd in the Vatican area at about 1.5 million people. Many camped out during the night in the square, which was bedecked with posters of the late pope and one of his most famous sayings, “Do not be afraid!”
In his homily, Benedict noted that the late Pope, whom he praised as having had “the strength of a titan” and who gave millions of people “the strength to believe,” had blessed crowds thousands of times from his window overlooking the same square. “Bless us now,” Benedict said.
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Pilgrims make long, arduous trips to fete John Paul
For Janusc Skibinski, there was only one place to be on the day the late Pope John Paul took the last step before sainthood. The Polish customs agent drove his family 29 hours from their hometown on the border with Belarus and queued with hundreds of thousands of people through the night so he could make it into St. Peter’s Square for the beatification of Poland’s most famous native son.
Clutching a red-and-white Polish flag, he was among tens of thousands of devotees from Poland, flanked by pilgrims from all over the world in the biggest crowd in the Vatican since John Paul’s funeral six years ago.
“He was our beloved pope. He always knew how to lead and be our guide, he taught us how to live and he taught us how to love,” said Skibinski, 40, waiting with his wife and two children for stewards to allow them to move into the square. “We were at the funeral and we just had to be here to see him beatified,” he said.
By the time the weary but happy Skibinskis made it into the square, more than a million people had gathered in the area around the Vatican. At the mass, John Paul’s successor Pope Benedict pronounced a Latin formula proclaiming one of the most popular popes in history a “blessed” of the Church, before a tapestry showing the late pope smiling was unveiled to the applauding crowds.
“It’s right to be here, it’s a duty,” said Italian pensioner Renzo Rizzi, who traveled from the northern city of Milan and queued since the early hours to guarantee his spot.
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Pope John Paul’s beatification stirs pride and hope in Polish Church
In the sleepy town of Wadowice in southern Poland, they are sprucing up the main square and renovating the house where its most famous son, the late Pope John Paul II, was born as Karol Wojtyla 91 years ago. Wadowice, its streets decked out with stalls hawking kitsch papal memorabilia, hopes John Paul’s beatification on May 1 — the last step before sainthood — will lure even more pilgrims to the modest two-storey house which is now a museum.
The Catholic Church here and across Poland also hopes the beatification in Rome, bestowing on John Paul the title of ‘blessed’, will rejuvenate an institution whose image has been somewhat tarnished in his native land by political squabbles and a lack of charismatic leadership since the Pope’s death in 2005.
But even some devout Catholics fret that beatification, with all its commercial razzmatazz, may fail to get Poles thinking more deeply about their faith and the late Pope’s teachings. “About half a million people are already visiting Wadowice every year. Now we want to give them a modern, interactive experience of John Paul II,” said Father Pawel Danek, head of the museum, explaining plans to expand it tenfold to 1,000 square meters with the help of private and public donations.
Churches around Poland — where more than 90 percent of people say they are Catholic and some 40 percent attend mass every Sunday — will stage all-night vigils before the beatification. Tens of thousands of Poles will be among an estimated 300,000 converging on Rome for the ceremony.
“It is six years since Pope John Paul II left us, but he only appears to be absent. He is still present on the paths of faith, hope and love of the people of God,” said Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who served as the Pope’s private secretary at the Vatican during his 1978-2005 reign. “We hope the longed-for beatification will deepen this presence, inspiring future generations to follow his ideal of a Christian life.”
Read the full story by Gabriela Baczynska here.
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Vatican invites all to John Paul beatification, cites “ethical” Rome hotel prices
The Vatican has urged the faithful not to let reports of huge crowds or unscrupulous hoteliers deter them from coming to Rome for the beatification of the late Pope John Paul on May 1. “I invite everyone to come. Rome is ready. Don’t be afraid of coming or of inviting people,” said Father Caesar Atuire on Tuesday.
The Vatican has begun the countdown to what will be the biggest event in the Italian capital since the death of the charismatic and highly popular pope in 2005, when millions of people came to view his body or attend his funeral. Vatican officials expect at least 300,000 people — including tens of thousands from his native Poland — to come to Rome for the three days of events during which he will be declared a “blessed,” the last step before sainthood.
The Vatican has already warned the faithful to beware of fraudsters, particularly on the Internet, who are selling tickets to the beatification ceremony. No tickets will be necessary for any of the ceremonies.
Vatican officials told a news conference that they had stipulated an “ethical pact” with the Rome hoteliers association in which members promised not to jack up prices for the period of the events, when rooms are expected to be scarce. There have been numerous media reports of skyrocketing prices, particularly in hotels in Rome’s historic center or in the Vatican area on the other side of the Tiber River.
Officials said the crowd would be marshaled by police and hundreds of volunteers. Giant television screens will be placed around Rome, 14 of them alone on Via della Conciliazione, the boulevard leading from the Tiber to St Peter’s Square.
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Woody Allen jazzes it up for Rome Catholic hospital
What’s a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn doing helping to raise money for a Catholic hospital owned by the Vatican in a city where until 1870 the papacy required Jews to live in a ghetto? If that nice Jewish boy is Woody Allen, the conundrum is resolved by a four-letter word: Jazz.
“Woody Allen and his New Orleans Jazz Band” charmed a packed house in Rome’s Conciliazione Auditorium three blocks from the Vatican and just across the Tiber River from Rome’s synagogue. The band, made up of Allen on clarinet and six other top-notch jazz musicians steeped in the New Orleans tradition, belted out more than a dozen tunes over nearly two hours at the benefit for the Bambino Gesu, Italy’s top children’s hospital.
“We love to play jazz music and we are always thrilled when anyone comes to hear us — thrilled and surprised, actually,” he told the audience in his trademark self-deprecating style.
That was it for one-liners, almost as if he wanted to step out of the shoes of Woody Allen the actor/director/comedian and into those of Woody Allen the musician.
They played numbers such as Louis Armstrong’s “Someday You’ll Be Sorry”, “Muskrat Ramble” by Kid Ory, “At The Jazz Band Ball”, “That’s A Plenty”, and “Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet”. There was also a sublime and moving rendition of the spiritual “Take My Hand Precious Lord” — fittingly, perhaps, if one considers that the world’s largest church — St. Peter’s Basilica — was just down the street.
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German pope prays at World War II Nazi atrocity site in Rome
German-born Pope Benedict prayed on Sunday at the site where Nazis killed 335 Italian men and boys and denounced one of the worst atrocities of World War Two as “the most horrendous form of evil”. Benedict visited the Ardeatine Caves on Rome’s southern outskirts and prayed there together with Rome’s chief Rabbi Riccardo di Segni. Seventy-five of the victims were Jews.
In his brief comments at the haunting underground site, Benedict, who was a member of the Hitler Youth when membership was compulsory and later served a German anti-aircraft artillery, called it a “painful memorial of the most horrendous form of evil”.
On March 23, 1944, Italian partisans set a bomb on a narrow street, killing 33 German policemen who were part of the occupying powers in Rome. In retaliation, a furious Hitler approved the murder of 10 Italians for each German killed and ordered that it should be carried out within 24 hours.
The victims of the reprisal, who eventually numbered five more than had been ordered by Hitler, were all shot in the back of the neck in the caves. The Germans later blew up the caves in a vain attempt to try to hide the massacre.
Benedict, speaking at the national monument where many of the victims are buried, said the massacre showed “the abyss that men can be sucked into when, spurred by blind violence, they abandon their own dignity as children of God and their fraternity among themselves”. Jewish groups welcomed the words of condemnation .
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Tullia Zevi, historic Italian Jewish leader, dies at 92
Tullia Zevi, one of the historic post-war leaders of Italy’s Jews and the only woman to ever hold the post of president of the country’s Jewish communities, died Saturday at the age of 92, her family said.
Zevi, who had been in failing health for some time and was a prominent figure in Christian-Jewish dialogue, died in a Catholic hospital just across the River Tiber from the Rome neighborhood that is still known as “The Ghetto.”
During her long career she also held senior positions in the World Jewish Congress and European Jewish Congress.
She was often critical of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church when she felt Jewish rights were not respected. One of the best-known women in Italy for decades, she was once considered a candidate for the country’s presidency.
Zevi was born in Milan of a well-to-do Jewish family that emigrated to the United States in the late 1930s after dictator Benito Mussolini enacted the so-called racial laws which prohibited Jews from holding state jobs or studying in state schools.
She was the lay head of Italy’s Jewish communities from 1983 to 1998 and was one of the officials who welcomed the late Pope John Paul to the Rome synagogue in 1986 when he became the first pontiff since the times of the Apostles to visit the temple.
from UK News:
A priest’s guide: How to Swim the Tiber Safely
About 50 Church of England priests opposed to the consecration of women as bishops are expected to be in the first wave of Anglicans to take up an offer by Pope Benedict and convert to Rome. The traditionalist priests will be joined by five bishops and 30 groups of parishioners, in a structure called an ordinariate, or a Church subdivision, in the new year.
About 300 priests switched in the early 1900s when women were ordained as priests. Then they did not have the comfort of moving over in groups, and nearly 70 returned to the Anglican fold.
Here, one priest explains why he stayed, while another describes why he returned.
Peter Bolton, left, was a priest in the Church of England for 10 years before becoming a Roman Catholic. Just one year later he returned to the C of E. Since his return he has served in parishes in Salford, Watford and Weston-super-Mare. Recently he took early retirement on grounds of ill health. The opinions expressed are his own.
Why did I come back? Because I had not counted the cost. I knew I would lose house and income – I was a Vicar – but I had not reckoned on the utter loneliness of the experience, the personal cost.
Priests and people in the local Catholic Church were wonderful. The Bishop was kindness itself. There was a warm welcome for me. But what I had not understood in advance was the damage my becoming an RC would do to relationships with those I had been close to in the past.
But I will never forget how I felt when I realised how much my own mother was hurting because I had gone to Rome, or how my best friend could hardly bring himself to speak to me for days after my Reception and Confirmation. There were others too.
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