9-11 Remembering Fr. Mychal Judge

9-11 Remembering Fr. Mychal Judge


 
America Media

Published on Sep 9, 2016


Thousands gather in New York City to remember 9/11's first official victim, the beloved chaplain Father Mychal Judge.

Militia of the Immaculata

Militia of the Immaculata

The Militia of the Immaculata (MI) is a worldwide evangelization movement founded by St. Maximilian Kolbe in 1917 that encourages total consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary as a means of spiritual renewal for individuals and society.

The MI movement is open to all Catholics over 7 years old. It employs prayer as the main weapon in the spiritual battle with evil. Members of the Militia Immaculata also immerse themselves in apostolic initiatives throughout society, either individually or in groups, to deepen the knowledge of the Gospel and our Catholic Faith in them and in others.

Marian consecration is a formal act of self-giving that does not stop at Mary, but is Christ-directed. It is really consecration to Jesus. The MI's mission is "To Lead Every Individual With Mary to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus."

By joining the MI, members become willing instruments of Our Lady, the woman foreshadowed in Genesis 3:15. She leads them to personal sanctification, the conversion of Church opponents and ultimately the universal reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The Militia of the Immaculata began on October 16, 1917, around a table at the Conventual Franciscan seminary in Rome. Maximilian Kolbe gathered six like-minded young friars before a statue of the Blessed Virgin and drafted a charter that would establish one of the most influential Marian apostolates ever. The charter still serves as a blueprint of spiritual progress for MI members today.

Since these humble beginnings, the MI has spread throughout the world and is today present on five continents and in forty-six nations. Official membership now nears four million. For more information, click here: Militia of the Immaculata

"Membership in the Militia means

complete dedication to the Kingdom

of God and to the salvation of souls

through Mary Immaculate."

Pope John Paul II

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Franciscans take modern approach to begging for alms

Associated Press

Tuesday, March 11, 2014 9:02pm




Associated Press
Friar Stefano Tamburo, head of the Franciscan convent in Rome, said the convent launched a $125,000 Kickstarter project to restore a cell.




Pope Francis' namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, founded his order of mendicant friars in the 13th century after receiving a calling from God to "rebuild my church."

Some 800 years later, St. Francis' followers are rebuilding his church in the ancient tradition of door-to-door begging that St. Francis championed — but with a very modern twist.

With interest in things Franciscan at an all-time high, the friars who run the San Francesco a Ripa church in Rome launched a Kickstarter online fundraising campaign Tuesday to raise $125,000 for the restoration of the tiny cell where St. Francis stayed when he came to Rome to see the pope.

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"Like the friars in the past would go asking for a piece of bread, today we are going to ask for a dollar, a euro, so we can make this place as it was in the time of St. Francis," said the Rev. Stefano Tamburo, the 43-year-old guardian of the sanctuary who is spearheading the campaign.

Kickstarter is one of dozens of crowd-funding websites that have sprung up in recent years to let people raise money for specific projects. Since it was founded in 2009, Kickstarter campaigns have included Spike Lee movies, funky restaurants, arts projects and business startups, according to its website.

Throngs of pilgrims have been flocking to the Franciscan sanctuary ever since the first pope named after Francis was elected a year ago. "We've seen a significant increase in pilgrims, but also Romans who maybe didn't know about this place," Tamburo said.



Franciscans take modern approach to begging for alms 03/11/14 [Last modified: Tuesday, March 11, 2014 9:01pm]


© 2013 Tampa Bay Times


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Israel’s Jesuit President, Shimon Peres heads again to Rome to offer Pope Francis I the Cenacle (Church with the Upper Room) and an International Jerusalem

06/16/2013


Israeli President Shimon Peres, the Vatican’s Agent to Israel: Part One



Israeli President Shimon Peres and His Protégé, Yasser Arafat have Destroyed Thousands of Jewish Lives

The ground was hardly warmed in the new papal apartment for Pope Francis I in Rome, when Israeli President Shimon Peres sailed the blue skies from Israel to Italy to lend his “signatured anti-Jewish life” and influence as the President of Israel to betray again the Israeli people in Israel. This betrayal will eventually harm most, the religious pioneering and patriots of Israel who live in the settlement regions of Shomron and Judea.

For three days, in early May (2013), Israeli President Shimon Peres was scheduled to visit Italy in order to also be hosted in a series of diplomatic meeting with the Italian president and Prime Minister of Italy. At that same time, he was being hosted and feted in a ceremony in the city of Assisi, named after the famous Catholic cleric, St. Francis of Assisi.

There Peres was awarded with the new first ever ceremonies of the Franciscans to give a “Peace Award” called the “Metal of Honor for Peace.” There the mayor of Assisi greeted Peres and also by “hundreds of Franciscan monks” in a ceremony at the central Roman Catholic Basilica in Assisi. Then Peres was presented this inaugural award, the “Medal of Honor for Peace” as the president of Israel for his “unique contribution to dialogue and the cause of peace.”




The Basilica de Papale San Francesco di Assisi

As Barry Chamish, in his recent article on May 13, 2013, titled, “Franciscans Honor Shimon Peres”, we learn:

Barry Chamish – “Those who know Peres acknowledge his, honestly, psychopathic need for medals and awards, to the point of bribing the Nobel committee for a prize. Last week, Yoav Yitzhak, in the wide circulation newspaper Maariv, revealed that Peres gave Terje Larsen, the UN Middle East representative, $100,000 to secure him a Nobel Prize.

This week, David Bedein, writing in Makor Rishon, applied the coup de grace. He interviewed a member of the Nobel Prize Committee, Kaare Kristiansen, who not just confirmed the bribe but described Larsen's pressure on the committee in full detail.

But accepting made-up accolades from the Franciscans is utterly insulting to anyone with a modicum of understanding of recent Jewish history. From the mid to late '40s, the Franciscans (along with the Dominicans), in what is known as Operation Paperclip, hid in their monasteries over a hundred thousand Nazis, before smuggling them to freedom worldwide. It is estimated that just the US received 30,000, largely Franciscan “refugees.

So while in Italy, naturally Peres lavished in the praises of the Nazi saviors and then was practically smothered by a pope, not named like many believe after a talking mule, but by the very same church leader that the Franciscans honor, Francis I [St Francis of Assisi]:

No sooner had Bergoglio (Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis I) taken office, than Peres invited the new pope to visit Israel, asking him to contribute to peace as a spiritual, rather than a political, leader. He'll be a welcome guest in the Holy Land, as a man of inspiration who can add to the attempt to bring peace in a stormy area," Peres said.”All people here, without exception, without difference of religion or nationality, will welcome the newly elected pope.”

Earlier than the year of 2005, Barry Chamish was the lone Israeli reporter who continued to post insights into the treacherous conspiratorial schemes of the Jewish Labor Zionist national leadership seeking to the destroy the Divine Intent of the G-d of Israel. The expressed intent of the Divine One through His prophets was to reestablish the dynastic rule of His messiah on Planet Earth in what Orthodox Judaism calls the “World to Come”. Albeit the stated goals of the Divine One through His prophets in Israel and Judah, the counter-forces of evil by HaSatan continuously seek to destroy the divine mission and goals of Religious Zionism:
To destroy internally the hopes and dreams of Jews over the last 2,000 year with the words, “Next Year in Jerusalem”. This laid the groundwork for a permanent homeland for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, and a haven of safety for the Jews still living in the Diaspora would become a permanent reality.
To destroy externally the State of Israel by Islam, and neutralize the State of Israel from within by those Jews called the Sabbatean Jews known as JINOs (Jews in Name Only) and the Jesuit Jews like Adam Weishaupt called the Illuminati whose origins began in Bavaria. All of these stem back to the infamous false messiah in the 17th century, Shabbatai Tzevi, who announced to the Jewish people that the “day of the Jewish messiah would come” on the date of June 18, 1666 (June the 6th month; 18 or 6+6+6, and 1666 or 1000+666). What is even clearer is that ultimate saboteur is the Vatican through the agency of the Black Pope of the Society of Jesus, called the Jesuits.
The road back to Rome is a road well traveled by the current Israeli President Shimon Peres. He has routinely taken this path over the years as the Israeli investigative reporter, Barry Chamish, called the “traitorous appeasement” of Vatican’s Jewish President. As Barry Chamish continued

Barry Chamish – “In 1979, Yitzhak Rabin published his autobiography, within was a one-line offbeat quote. He said that unlike all Jewish children growing up in Poland, Shimon Peres spent his early education at a Jesuit school. It was an odd fact and I took a mental note of it without understanding its significance...Until I broke my first attention-getting story as a political journalist:

In March 1994, the newspaper Chadashot revealed a most remarkable secret of the Middle East “peace” process. A friend of Shimon Peres, the French intellectual Marek Halter claimed in an interview that in May 1993, he delivered a letter from Peres to the pope.

Within, Peres promised to internationalize Jerusalem, granting the UN political control of the Old City of Jerusalem, and the Vatican hegemony of the holy sites within. The UN would give the PLO a capital within its new territory and East Jerusalem would become a kind of free trade zone of world diplomacy. Halter's claim was backed by the Italian newspaper La Stampa which added that Arafat was apprised of the agreement and it was included in the secret clauses of the Declaration Of Principles signed in Washington in September 1993.

In March 1995, the Israeli radio station Arutz Sheva was leaked a cable from the Israeli Embassy in Rome to Peres' Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem confirming the handover of Jerusalem to the Vatican. This cable was printed on the front page of the radical leftwing Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz two days later.

A scandal erupted and numerous rabbis who had invited Peres for Passover services cancelled their invitations in protest of his treachery. Peres reacted by claiming that the cable was real but that someone had whiten out the word, "not;" the cable really said that Israel would "not" hand Jerusalem over to the holy pontiff.

Illustrating the sorry political state of Israel's rabbis, they accepted this cockamamie excuse and re-invited Peres to their tables. However, in the widely distributed minutes of a meeting with Clinton in 1997, Peres reiterated his diplomacy, ending with the words, "as I had previously promised the Holy See.”

Jewish Rabbi David Rosen, the Papal Knight Commander of the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great

During this era of high political and religious drama between the Vatican and the State of Israel, BibleSearchers Reflections looked at the issues more closely starting in 1993 to 2005 in the article titled, “The Vatican Wants Jerusalem”. In this article, the historical map of Rome’s model for the control of Jerusalem was mapped out from the date in 1993 when Vatican Rome and Israel agreed to normalized and establish formal diplomatic relations with each other. This was documented in the fundamental agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel on December 30, 1993. The one problem, the “fundamental agreement” was kept secret.

It took another four years when in 1997 the State of Israel agreed to a legal status in Israel for the Vatican. This came with the Meshumad (apostate) Jewish Rabbi David Rosen, the Papal Knight Commander of the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great who put the Vatican’s pathway in the future clearly on the road for the Internationalization of Jerusalem.

It was in October 20, 2005 that Israel National News reported that a seven year negotiation with Vatican Rome was finally completed and it was now time to turn over numerous buildings, parcels of land that the Roman Catholic Church claims that it used to own and control. These facts were being reported by the Vatican newspaper, El Messagero, that Israeli President Katsav was prepared to sign over to the control of the Vatican. The major site of interest was the purported site of the “Last Supper” which is recognized by the Jews as the burial site of Kings David, Solomon, Rechavam, Assa, Chezekiyahu and Amatzia.



Tomb of King David in Jerusalem

According to the agreement, the upper part of David’s Tomb would traded in exchange for an ancient Jewish synagogue in Toledo, Spain that was converted into a Catholic Church after the Jews were expelled from Spain on the 9th of Av, 1492. Other sites of interest in which the Vatican wants the Israeli government to give up sovereignty over include six sites; the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Coenaculum on Mount Zion, Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and the Church of the Multiplication on Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee).

So today, over the top of one of the largest Jewish yeshivas teaching young Jews the profound truths of the Torah will soon, if the Israeli government finally craters under the pressure from their president, Shimon Peres and the Vatican, every morning mass will be conducted overhead to the droning of ritual chants taking away one of the most peaceful and reverential areas of Old Jerusalem today. This fact alone gained the ire of a Jewish physician, Dr. Daisy Stern who wrote the following in the article titled, “Perfect Crime: The Vatican’s Plot to rob Am Yisrael of Jerusalem (The Secret Machinations of the Vatican, Part II, 2009)”

Dr. Daisy Stern – “Nobody hears a peep about what's going on: we just find out that Benedict XVI is coming for a visit to Israel. Only 10 million dollars is used to prepare for his visit, among others 6 million NIS (Jewish Shekels), one for every Jew killed in the Holocaust, to renovate Catholic holy places. Among others, the Cenacle, which until now had bare walls, because no paraphernalia of idol worship is allowed in a yeshiva, that is, the Diaspora Yeshiva of Har Tzion. But no worry: renovation have already begun there. With other words, the properties are being readied for the pope’s arrival, turned into proper Catholic shrine, Jewish or not.”

A year after the Vatican’s major push to gain control of the Cenacle, where the Jewish prince of David and Orthodox rabbi, Jesus the Nazarene (Yahshua HaNotzri) held the “Last Supper” in the House with the Upper Room. In the year of 2005, Israeli President Moshe Katsav agreed to sign over the site to the Roman Catholic Church. The G-d of Israel thought otherwise and within eighteen month, President Katsav was charged and later convicted of two counts of rape with female subordinates, sexual harassment of others, obstruction of justice and sentenced to seven years in prison.

While President Katsav was fighting the charges of rape and obstruction of justice, according to the Jewish journalist, Hillel Fendel with Israel National News (Arutz Sheva), he reported on April 6, 2006 that Shimon Peres was again flying in the air on the way to Rome, while Ehud Olmert was presiding as Acting Prime Minister of Israel. In a most interesting news blog titled, “Peres Meets with Pope in Vatican”, by Israel National News, we learn:


Israeli President Shimon Peres with Pope Benedict XVI reported by Leftist Israeli Haaretz News

Israel National News – “Israel's indefatigable Shimon Peres met with Pope Benedict XVI today, and submitted an invitation to visit Israel from Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The two met for 40 minutes in the Vatican, and the Pope said he hopes to visit Israel sometime in the first half of next year. They said afterwards that they had discussed Middle East matters. “I definitely believe that a visit by the Pope can influence the peace process,” Peres told reporters. Peres is reported, in 1994, to have promised the Vatican official status in Jerusalem.

In February 2000, the Vatican and the Palestinian Authority signed an agreement calling for an internationally guaranteed special status for Jerusalem. The agreement stated that a special statute would protect "equality before the law of the three monotheistic religions [in Jerusalem], the proper identity and sacred character of the city, [and] freedom of access" to the city's holy sites.

Israel objected, saying that freedom of religion is already protected throughout the country. It also opposed the Vatican's treatment of the PA as an independent country.

Shortly afterwards, Pope John Paul II visited Israel, and - unlike one of his predecessors, Pope Paul VI, who visited in 1964 - agreed to come to Jerusalem. Pope John Paul II met with the Chief Rabbis in their Jerusalem offices, and visited Yad Vashem as well. Pope Paul, on the other hand, refused to visit Jerusalem, leading then-Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Nissim to boycott his visit altogether.

During his visit in 2000, Pope John Paul II conducted a prayer service in Bethlehem, and announced that the Vatican had always recognized the Palestinians' national rights to a homeland. Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, Dean of Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim, said in response that the Pope's goal was simply to obtain a foothold in Jerusalem for the Church, and that his visit was one way the Pope hoped to reach this goal.

“If the Catholics would at least stop supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state in our land, and stop supporting the other Arab nations around us - then this could be considered a significant step,” Rabbi Aviner said.

Pope John Paul II did not expressly apologize for the role played by the Church, and its silence, during the Holocaust. He said instead that the Church is “deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place... I fervently pray that our sorrow for the tragedy which the Jewish people suffered in the 20th century will lead to a new relationship between Christians and Jews. Let us build a new future in which there will be no more anti-Jewish feeling among Christians or anti-Christian feeling among Jews...”

Former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau has said that an earlier pope, Pope Pius XII, refused several requests by Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog to meet with him before and during the Holocaust to discuss how the Church could help save Jewish lives. After the war, too, Chief Rabbi Herzog asked for the Pope's assistance in locating Jewish orphans who were cared for by Catholic families, and again, the Pope refused.

The current pope has been following in the footsteps of his predecessor John Paul in trying to improve Jewish-Catholic relations.”

It was the year of 2003 in the month of September, when Richard Joel became the first non-rabbi to become the president of the Yeshiva University in New York and Israel in which according to Dr. Daisy Stern, Richard Joel was a Meshumad (apostate) Jew and a “stooge of the Council on Foreign Relations”; the nesting ground for Shabbatian Jews, Frankist Jews, NeoCon Jews, all of which have a propensity to abandon their Jewish roots and become as Rabbi Marvin Antelman called in his seminal books, “To Eliminate the Opiate, Vol I in print, Vol 1 on PDF and Vol 2”, JINOs or “Jews in Name Only.”


Yeshiva University President Richard Joel

Under the invitation of President Richard Joel, Yeshiva University invited and hosted on January 2004, the largest meeting of Cardinals ever to be assembled outside of Vatican Rome to meet exclusively with Jewish rabbis; this time in Yeshiva University in New York City. It was organized by Israel Singer with the World Jewish Congress and another “Meshumad” (apostate) the Jewish Cardinal Lustiger of Paris, France who almost gained the Curia’s nod to become the new pope taking the place of the deceased Jewish Pope John Paul II yet was instead earned by the Jewish Pope Benedict XVI (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) who was also a Meshumad (apostate) Jew.

The attendees at this meeting included Ten Cardinals from Rome, plus a host of Conservative and Reform rabbis plus 16 Orthodox rabbis which included current and chief rabbis from six different countries including Chief Rabbi of Israel, Israel Meir Lau. There amidst Torah study, was an atmosphere which Dr. Stern called “highly dubious activity in this setting, where anti-Semitism around the world was being discussed.” The rabbis in attendance were put under extreme pressure with the message; “give the Vatican back her properties or else we cannot vouch for your safety.”

On the negotiating side of the table by the Vatican were Pietro Sambi, Archbishop and Apostolic and since 1998, the Nuncio to Israel and Palestine, plus Franciscan Father David Yaeger, Giovanni LaJolo the Vatican Secretary of Relations with States, who later brought the issue of the State of Israel not relinquishing her Vatican properties to the United Nations.

Let it be clear, in addition, that the Catholic Church is and has been a strong supporter of the Oslo Peace Agreement, which, as noted earlier, goes hand in hand with the Fundamental Agreement, and is a code for the same goal, namely, return of "Church properties" to the Church, under the guise of fairness to the Arabs.

How do all of these events link themselves together? Today, Pope Francis I namesakes, the Franciscans, to whom Friar David Yaeger is a member, were one of the two major Catholic Orders that were in charge of enforcing the “Grand Inquisition.” It was their supreme order that they were to kill, maim, burn and torture Jews and Protestant Christians in the name of the Roman Christian Church! And we now are to believe that the Franciscans still carry the mantra of the peacefulness of St. Francis of Assisi?

So what does the Hommes de Parole NGO do? They invite with kindness and graciousness their Jewish rabbis, especially the Israeli chief rabbis, to the table of consensus and try to indoctrinate them into the charade of “land for peace”. It was their purpose that these same rabbis will return to the Land of Israel and influence the secular Jews running the government to give up former Roman Catholic “Church Property” whose acquisition came with the Roman Christian Crusades.

Then we have to remember that they, the Church did not gain these acquisitions peacefully, but by the very acts of peace they are promoting today, virtually killed and destroyed every Jewish person in the Land of Israel in the 11th to the 13th century CE. So we tie together very carefully the theme that the Roman Catholic Church and the Oslo Peace Accord are indelibly intertwined. It was not created under the guise of fairness and peace for Arab Palestinians but for Vatican’s control of Jerusalem and the Middle East, but rather to hide that the Vatican wants control over the Temple Mount, so that the Vatican’s P2 Masonic Lodge with the Illuminati can erect a Temple for the Jews and a House of Prayer for all people, with the Vatican now being leading architect, instead of the G-d of Israel for peace to all the world.

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You may Want to Read the Entire Series: Israeli President Shimon Peres, the Vatican’s Agent to Israel

Part One – “Israel’s Jesuit President, Shimon Peres heads again to Rome to offer Pope Francis I the Cenacle (Church with the Upper Room) and an International Jerusalem”

Part Two – “The Global Plot of Shimon Peres and Pope Benedict XVI to undermine the Sovereignty of Israel during the 2006 War between Israel and Lebanon”

Part Three – “The Vatican’s Emissary to Israel, Shimon Peres prepares to give Pope Francis I control of the Temple Mount”

You might Want to Read the BibleSearchers 2005 Series; “The Vatican seeks to Reclaim its Own”

Go to Part One – “The Vatican seek to Reclaim its own; The Church with the Upper Room”

Go to Part Two - “The Pathway and the Players in the Bid to Control Jerusalem”

Go to Part Three – “The Vatican Wants Jerusalem”

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The facts exist; the G-d of Israel is the ruler of all the Earth. Evil powers under the rule of HaSatan are trying to usurp that rule so that all of Planet Earth will come under the rule of rebellious angelic forces. Hashem’s capital of this solar system is Jerusalem, a place that G-d calls His own in unequivocal terms. The final Drama of the Ages will be over Jerusalem, yet when all hope appears to be lost, the forces of Light will eradicate the forces of darkness. The era of the Messiah will now reign in an era of Torah enlightenment.

If you want to learn more, click the link and Contact “Kol Ha Tor Vision”, the Voice of the Turtledove. Kol Ha Tor is a joint Orthodox Jewish and 10-Triber Mission to bring awareness of the imminent fulfillment of the Biblical Prophecies regarding the Redemption of all Israel (12 Tribes Re-conciled and Re-United). This super Event of all Times will entail Establishing the Shomron (the Ancient Bible Heartland of the Patriarchs) and the Judean Wilderness as part of the Land of Israel, and preparing the “Land” for the Return of the Lost Tribes of the House of Israel and then the Redemption of All Israel.

For inquiries about Kol Ha Tor Vision for the Lost Tribes of Israel, Visit – “Shomron Lives!”, a Spiritual Retreat and Guest House in Samaria.


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Franciscans Honor Shimon Peres

Sunday, May 12th, 2013 | Posted by Veterans Today

by Barry Chamish


Israeli President Shimon Peres visited Italy for 3 days in early May, 2013. His visit was a predictable betrayal of the Jews, beginning with his new Franciscan “peace” award:”

Peres will also hold a series of diplomatic meetings with the President and Prime Minister of Italy, and take part in a ceremony in the city of Assisi. The mayor of Assisi, where hundreds of Franciscan monks live, will present its first-ever Medal of Honor for Peace to President Peres for his “unique contribution to dialogue and the cause of peace.” At the ceremony he will receive the Medal of Honor for Peace and will be greeted by “hundreds of Franciscan monks” at the central Basilica, according to an official statement.

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Brother commits suicide: Self-inflicted knife wound cited

January 27, 2013

Brother Paul Stephen Baker was facing allegations of abuse at Bishop McCort.
Kathy Mellott and Patrick Buchnowski

kmellott@tribdem.com


HOLLIDAYSBURG — Brother Paul Stephen Baker, the Franciscan friar who was the subject of a sex scandal at Bishop McCort Catholic High School, died Saturday from a self-inflicted knife wound.

Baker, 62, who was living at the St. Bernardine Monastery, took his life at the facility, located at 768 Monastery Road, Hollidaysburg, said a statement from Blair Township police Chief Roger White.

White said his department, Hollidaysburg EMS and the Pennsylvania State Police were called to the monastery at 7:35 a.m. in response to an individual who reportedly was not breathing.

Baker, also known as Stephen Baker, was discovered in his room by another resident of the monastery who initially summoned an ambulance, White said.

He is believed to have stabbed himself just prior to him being discovered, White said.

Baker was pronounced dead at the scene by Blair County Deputy Coroner Brian Reidy.

Confirmation of the suicide did not come until late Saturday afternoon following a 2 p.m. autopsy at Nason Hospital, Roaring Spring.

In a short statement from Brother John Kerr, inside a small room in the aging multi-story brick monastery, Father Patrick Quinn, Third Order Regular, minister provincial confirmed Baker’s passing.

“We regret to announce that Br. Stephen Baker died this morning,” Quinn wrote in the statement. “The matter is under investigation by the authorities.

“We will not be able to make further comment until the investigation is concluded.”

During the past 10 days, dozens of former male students from Bishop McCort have come forward, alleging that Baker sexually molested them.

Quinn fell short of citing the allegations, though he made reference to them.

“We express our regret and prayers to his family and especially to all who have been impacted by this tragic situation,” Quinn concluded.

Kerr, who answered the door at the monastery, said that Quinn was out of town Saturday and unavailable for comment.

In responding to questions by The Tribune-Democrat, Kerr said that Baker was the cook at the monastery. He added that he was a good cook.

Prior to Baker’s death, there were eight residents at St. Bernardine, Kerr said.

Tony DeGol, spokesman of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, said Bishop Mark Bartchak was saddened by news of Baker’s death.

Citing pending legal action, DeGol said in a statement that no further comment would be made.

“Bishop Bartchak continues to pray for everyone during this difficult time,” DeGol wrote.

Baker, whose past has been difficult to track, came to Bishop McCort around 1992. While a Franciscan, he worked at the high school under the authority of the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese as a religion instructor and in the athletic department.

It was while he worked with high school athletes through the early 2000s that many of the sexual assaults allegedly occurred. Victims who have been coming forward are alleging various degrees of sexual assault. The offenses usually took place in a whirlpool or on a table in the athletic department.

Victims also have told attorneys that some of the assaults occurred in Baker’s van.

The allegations from former Bishop McCort students surfaced after a settlement of civil suits recently was announced between 11 former students of the John F. Kennedy High School in Warren, Ohio, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Youngstown.

Baker had worked at the Ohio school as an instructor and in the athletic department from 1986 to 1991. It was his last assignment before coming to Bishop McCort, according to a timeline provided to The Tribune-Democrat by SNAP – the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests.

During his time in Ohio, it is alleged that Baker molested at least two boys attending St. Mary’s Catholic Middle School, a feeder school for JFK.

Last week, Greensburg attorney Susan Williams filed notice of intent to pursue civil action against the Franciscans, the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese and Bishop McCort.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Saturday that an allegation in 2000 out of Minnesota prompted Baker’s reassignment from Bishop McCort to Blair County, initially to St. Joseph’s Friary in Hollidaysburg, then to St. Bernardine.

Quinn told the Post-Gazette the Minnesota allegation was a single event and did not involve a school.



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Files on Accused LA Priests Could Soon Be Public

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By By GILLIAN FLACCUS Associated Press
LOS ANGELES December 10, 2012 (AP)




Secret files kept for decades by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles on priests accused of sexually abusing children could soon become public as a five-year legal battle over their release reaches its endgame.

A judge will hear final objections Monday from accused priests and is also expected to begin hashing out a timeline for the release of thousands of pages of top-secret church documents on abusive clerics. Plaintiff attorneys have been trying to gain access to the files since a $660 million settlement in 2007 called for their disclosure.

Earlier this year, the California Supreme Court declined to intervene after a lower court ordered the release of some of the files, setting the stage for a larger disclosure.

Both attorneys for the church and the plaintiffs said they expected the documents would be made public within a month and no later than February after Monday's critical hearing. Private files on Franciscan friars accused of abuse were released earlier this year after a similar legal fight.

"There are explosive documents that are going to be coming out," said lead plaintiff attorney Ray Boucher, who has seen some of the material while reviewing it with archdiocese attorneys in preparation for the release.

"I don't think there's any question but that the information that will be forthcoming ... is beyond anything the public has seen so far."

The files contain letters between church leaders, including the recently retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, letters to and from the priests themselves, notes and memos about reports of suspected abuse, medical and psychological records and — in some cases — paperwork petitioning for a particular priest's defrocking by the Vatican.

Michael Hennigan, an archdiocese attorney, said the church is committed to releasing the documents but wants to make sure the privacy rights of priests are protected.

Plaintiffs in particular want to see if — and when — archdiocese officials were warned about their alleged abusers or if the church avoided civil and criminal action by not reporting to police or shuffling accused clerics from parish to parish or diocese to diocese.

The archbishop has apologized for his handling of the sex abuse scandal and has acknowledged missteps in how he handled several highly publicized cases, including that of former priest Michael Baker.

Baker told Mahony at a retreat in 1986 that he had molested two young boys but the archbishop has said he didn't alert anyone because the priest told him the children were illegal immigrants who had returned to Mexico.

That case seriously tarnished Mahony's reputation and prompted a criminal grand jury probe that never resulted in charges.

When the Los Angeles archdiocese settled its abuse cases in 2007, lead plaintiff attorney Boucher estimated that Baker's conduct accounted for $40 million of the total.

The former priest was arrested in 2006 as he returned from a vacation in Thailand and ultimately sentenced to 10 years in prison for molestation.

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Who invented the nativity scene?

Who invented the nativity scene?


Sunday, November 11, 2012
Kathleen Manning


Giotto di Bondone (1266-1336). Nativity, c. 1305. Fresco. Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy. ©Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, N.Y.

If you missed the feast of Francis of Assisi in October, the Christmas season offers another opportunity to commemorate the saint. Anyone who has erected a nativity scene is following Francis’ 13th-century example.

On Christmas Eve 1223, the saint created the first nativity in the Italian city of Greccio. With the help of a local nobleman, Francis celebrated the birth of Jesus in a cave outside the town. The liturgy featured a hay-filled manger in front of the temporary altar, and as Francis preached, the nobleman arranged to have an ox and a donkey stand at the altar as well.

The Franciscans quickly spread the practice of creating nativity scenes with live animals and actors. Living scenes remained popular, but static nativities also developed, allowing the scene to remain on display for longer periods for meditation.

As the tradition was introduced to new regions throughout the world, nativity scenes adapted to local tastes and customs. Incorporating local elements was especially popular in Francis’ native Italy, where the participants in the scene looked less like biblical figures and more like characters from the local village.

A few years ago, however, there were complaints that this localism had gone too far when a figurine of former Italian prime minister, the scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi, appeared in a nativity scene in Naples.

By the 19th century Protestant churches, which initially rejected nativity scenes as a form of idolatrous Catholic superstition, slackened their opposition to the scenes, and their popularity spread through the wider Christian world. Last Christmas, a church in Southampton, England gathered shepherds, angels, and wise men of all sizes in an attempt to break the record for the largest living nativity. At 298 participants, however, they fell well short of the record of 567 people.

Francis’ original nativity was inspired by his trip in 1221 to the Holy Land and Jesus’ traditional birthplace. He was deeply moved visiting the site where God became fully human. Hoping others could enjoy the same profoundly spiritual experience, Francis encouraged believers to make pilgrimages to Bethlehem. By 1223, however, conflict among the powers vying for control of the Holy Land made the trip too dangerous for pilgrims. Francis decided to do the next best thing—bring Bethlehem to the pilgrims.

Accounts of Francis’ original nativity do not include much information about the congregation that gathered. We do not know if the Italian villagers standing in the cold on Christmas Eve nearly eight centuries ago were as moved as Francis was by the idea of an omnipotent God so capable of love and humility that he took the form of a vulnerable infant and was born outdoors among the animals.

The popularity of nativity scenes, however, indicates that over the centuries people were drawn to the possibility of building their own Bethlehem. Setting up a nativity scene not only allows us to remember and celebrate the drama of Jesus’ birth but also the saint so enraptured with that drama that he brought it to life.


By Kathleen Manning, a Ph.D. candidate in history at Rutgers University. This article appeared on the December 2012 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 77, No. 12, page 46)

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Atheists resign yourselves: God exists (and is fighting with us?)

02/28/2012

An atheism campaign

Fabrizio Mastrofini Rome

In contrast to those (Pope in the lead) who see in secularism and indifference the challenge of all challenges, the magazine Credere Oggi (of the Franciscan convent in Padua) devotes its latest issue to analyzing Atheism and faith in God. The “new atheism” we are witnessing has many facets. Firstly, there is no God, and indeed creating images of him is only a childish fantasy that needs to be overcome. Here the atheist gets along with the believer because the Bible commands us not to create images of God. In Italy the phenomenon of atheism has an Anglo-Saxon influence pointed out in several articles which list various names and currents as examples. We have the freethinkers that use the new cognitivism of neurosciences to dissolve the metaphysical concept of soul. Then there are the anti-clerical followers of Christopher Hitchens, religion pollutes every human experience under the weight of an even more useless and unnecessary hierarchy. Lastly, the “neognostic”, which is allegedly very dangerous because capable of dissolving the uniqueness and authenticity of the revelation brought by Christ into an indifferent market of religious offerings.

The atheism of today, the authors of various articles point out in unison, demonstrates to be a phenomenon that is more aggressive than in the past because it uses the results of cognitive science to demonstrate the futility of faith. God becomes just another thought among others. So what must one do? As the theologian Bruno Secondin says in the magazine's closing article, we should be wary of “shortcuts” and clarify the differences between a church (understood as a place of worship) where you live an experience and meet people in the name of Jesus and a McDonald's where you nibble here and there in response to a primitive instinct.

The analysis is suggestive and interesting. Especially for the scenery of the positions that are shown. What is missing then? Ask at least one question: is it possible for atheism or criticism of religion which then leads to atheism, is all on one side? Maybe there is some responsibility also with believers and the Church, when they both seem too caught up in economic interests, politics and power, which should have nothing to do with religion? How to speak without recognizing the reasons of others? There are no answers to these questions, at least in this issue. There is rather tetragonal criticism and perhaps this is one of the most significant relationships between the Church and the modern world today.

"New atheism and faith in God", Credere Oggi magazine, number 187 (1/2012); pp. 120, Euro 8,50 http://www.credereoggi.it/

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