Pope Francis called for more solidarity with those living in poverty as he celebrated mass in Rome in front of a masked congregation of around 2,000 people, while billions around the world again marked Christmas under the shadow of the coronavirus.

An explosion in cases driven by the rise of the Omicron variant has meant a Christmas season tainted by the pandemic for a second year running, with Santa’s arrival and longed-for family reunions overshadowed by the prospect of yet more Covid-19 restrictions.

In St Peter’s Basilica, the 85-year-old Argentine pontiff urged the faithful to “value the little things in life”.

“On this night of love, may we have only one fear: that of offending God’s love, hurting him by despising the poor with our indifference,” said Francis, who later Saturday will give his traditional Urbi et Orbi address and blessing.

About 2,000 members of the public and 200 religious figures attended the Christmas Eve mass, wearing face masks and respecting social distancing as part of measures against the coronavirus.

In Bethlehem’s Manger Square, visitors in Santa hats and scouts beating drums marked Christmas Eve, but numbers were lower than usual as coronavirus fears overshadowed celebrations for a second straight year.

The city where Christians believe Jesus was born is usually a focal point of the holiday, with thousands packing the streets and filling hotels.

But Israel, which controls all entrances to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, barred its borders to foreigners in an effort to rein in infections from the Omicron strain of the coronavirus.

“It is a bit surreal,” American student Hudson Harder told AFP.

“There is a selfish part where it’s like ‘Oh I get to see this place so empty’ but on the other hand you feel for the shops, all the money they are losing, it’s really quite tragic.”

Flights cancelled

In his homily for midnight mass celebrated in St Catherine’s Church in Bethlehem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa said it was however encouraging that celebrations were “certainly more joyful this year”.

“Compared to last year’s Christmas, the participation is much greater and this is an encouraging sign,” he told the masked congregation, but regretted the absence of foreign worshippers due to the pandemic.

In the southern Philippines, standing in a pool of water in his typhoon-hit church, Father Ricardo Virtudazo celebrated Christmas Day mass with dozens of devotees who prayed for a better year after the storm killed nearly 400 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

“What’s important is all of us are safe,” said Joy Parera, 31, attending the service with her husband in the town of Alegria on the island of Mindanao.

Another survivor, Marites Sotis, said she would usually serve up meat, spring rolls and salad for Christmas but that her family was struggling after the storm felled most of their coconut trees.

“We won’t have those this year because they cost a lot of money,” Sotis, 53, told AFP. “We’ll make do with spaghetti.”

For the second year, surging infections have complicated yuletide plans from Sydney to Seville.

The new coronavirus strain severely disrupted holiday travel, with tracking website Flightaware.com reporting more than 2,300 flights had been cancelled around the world, hundreds of them in the United States.

Millions of Americans were nevertheless on the move to see loved ones for Christmas, even as Covid infections surpass the peak of the previous wave and hospitals run out of beds.

In Washington, US President Joe Biden and his wife Jill visited a children’s hospital for the traditional Christmas book-reading by the first lady.

The couple chatted with patients and doctors, showing one boy a photo of “Commander” — their new puppy — before settling into chairs beside a Christmas tree and reading a book inspired by the Disney movie “Frozen”.

In Europe, governments are reimposing misery-inducing safety measures that are draining the fun from Christmas for many.

The Netherlands is back in lockdown while Spain and Italy have made wearing masks compulsory outdoors.

And with Britain hitting a record high number of Covid-19 infections again on Friday for a third day in a row, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggested getting a vaccine booster shot as a Christmas gift for relatives.

‘Ray of light’

Still, Christmas gatherings will be easier than a year ago in many other places around the world.

Most Australians are allowed to travel interstate over the festive break for the first time in two years, with Sydney’s Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fisher saying that Christmas was “a ray of light” in dark times.

And Santa Claus was not deterred from doing his rounds and been cleared for travel in Canada’s airspace after showing proof of vaccination and a pre-flight negative Covid test, Ottawa’s transport minister said.

According to the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) Santa-tracking website, Father Christmas had delivered nearly five billion gifts and was flying over Canada at around 0200 GMT.

“He’s been at it for many hours already and will go throughout the evening as well,” said Major General Eric Kenny, commander of the Canadian NORAD region.

Source: AFP

Pope Francis on Saturday urged dialogue on both personal and political levels as he celebrated a second Christmas under the shadow of a coronavirus pandemic that was pushing people into isolation.

In his traditional Urbi and Orbi Christmas Day message to the faithful gathered in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican, the pontiff also deplored that the “immense tragedies” in Syria, Yemen and Iraq were “being passed over in silence” and cautioned against fresh violence in the simmering conflict in Ukraine.

“In this time of pandemic…Our capacity for social relationships is sorely tried; there is a growing tendency to withdraw, to do it all by ourselves, to stop making an effort to encounter others and do things together,” he said.

“On the international level too, there is the risk of avoiding dialogue, the risk that this complex crisis will lead to taking shortcuts rather than setting out on the longer paths of dialogue.”

“Yet only those paths can lead to the resolution of conflicts and to lasting benefits for all.”

Around the world, “we continue to witness a great number of conflicts, crises and disagreements. These never seem to end; by now we hardly even notice them. We have become so used to them that immense tragedies are now being passed over in silence,” he said, mentioning Syria, Iraq and Yemen, among others.

“In Ukraine, prevent fresh outbreaks of a long-festering conflict,” he said, as tensions mounted between Russia and the West over the fate of the strategic ex-Soviet country.

Source: AFP

A Franciscan nun from Colombia kidnapped by jihadists in Mali more than four years ago has been freed, Mali’s presidency said.

Sister Gloria Cecilia Narvaez was taken hostage on February 7, 2017 in southern Mali near the border with Burkina Faso where she had been working as a missionary.

A statement on the presidential Twitter account paid tribute to her “courage and bravery” along with photos of the nun taken after her release Saturday.

“I thank the Malian authorities, the president, all the Malian authorities, for all the efforts you’ve made to liberate me, may God bless you, may God bless Mali,” Sister Gloria said in images broadcast on state television showing her with Mali’s interim president Colonel Assimi Goita and the archbishop of Bamako Jean Zerbo.

“I am very happy, I stayed healthy for five years, thank God,” the nun said, smiling and wearing a yellow robe.

Her liberation had been the fruit of “four years and eight months of the combined effort of several intelligence services”, the presidency said.

In the official statement, Goita assured that “efforts are under way” to secure the release of all those still being held in Mali.

Archbishop Zerbo said Sister Gloria was “doing well”.

“We prayed a lot for her release. I thank the Malian authorities and other good people who made this release possible,” the archbishop said.

Sister Gloria, 59, was kidnapped near Koutiala, 400 kilometres (250 miles) east of Bamako. She had worked as a missionary for six years in the parish of Karangasso with three other nuns.

According to one of her colleagues, Sister Carmen Isabel Valencia, she offered herself in place of two younger nuns the kidnappers were preparing to take.

“She is a woman of a very particular human quality, down to earth … moved by the love of the poor,” Sister Carmen said.

In Colombia, her brother Edgar Narvaez said he was very emotional after receiving news of her release.

“She is in good health, thank God. They sent me pictures and she looks well,” he told AFP.

In a letter sent last July by the Red Cross to her brother, Sister Gloria said she was held by “a group of GSIM”, the Al-Qaeda-linked Group to Support Islam and Muslims, the largest jihadist alliance in the Sahel.

A source close to the negotiations to release her told AFP she had not been ill-treated during her captivity and during that time she had learned the Koran.

“The negotiations lasted months, years,” said the source, without giving further details.

Bound for Rome

An official at Bamako airport, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP the nun had arrived in the Malian capital on Saturday evening from where she was due to fly to Rome. Her departure from Bamako was confirmed by the city’s archdiocese.

In Colombia, Vice-President Marta Lucia Ramirez — who is also foreign minister — said she was “very happy” at Sister Gloria’s release, which she attributed to the work of the government and also stressed the “humanitarian efforts of the French government to contribute to this success”.

National police director Jorge Luis Vargas also welcomed her release.

“Today is very good news for Colombia, but also for the national police for all the efforts made over the years to secure the safe release of our compatriot,” he said.

Vargas said meetings had been held with several European and African ambassadors to try to secure the nun’s release.

“With Interpol, and with other international organisations, we have always sought to bring those responsible to justice.”

There were irregular reports about the nun over the years, including at the beginning of 2021, when two Europeans who managed to escape captivity reported that she was well.

Then in March, her brother received proof that she was still alive, passed on from the Red Cross.

It was a letter written in capital letters “because she always used capital letters”, containing the names of their parents and ending with her signature, he told AFP earlier this year.

Mali has been struggling to contain a jihadist insurgency that first emerged in the north of the country in 2012, and which has since spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Kidnappings, once rare, have become more common in recent years as a security crisis has deepened in Mali, particularly in the centre of the former French colony.

French journalist Olivier Dubois was abducted on April 8 in northern Mali by jihadists affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

Dubois, who worked with several French news outlets, said in a hostage video that GSIM had abducted him.

(AFP)

The trial of a once powerful Catholic cardinal and nine others resumes Tuesday at the Vatican over alleged financial fraud and a disastrous London property deal paid for with charity funds.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who served as the equivalent of chief of staff for Pope Francis at the time of the deal and was later fired from another post, is being tried alongside high-rolling London-based financiers and other Church employees.

They are accused of crimes including embezzlement, fraud and corruption relating to the Church’s loss-making purchase of a luxury property in London’s upscale Chelsea district.

Becciu was at the time number two at the Secretariat of State, the most powerful department in the Vatican’s central administration.

The case against the 73-year-old, which carries charges of embezzlement, abuse of office and witness tampering, also includes separate allegations over hundreds of thousands of euros of Church funds paid to his brother’s charity.

The trial is unprecedented in going before a Vatican tribunal of three lay magistrates rather than a religious court, after Francis changed the law to strip cardinals and bishops of legal privileges.

Becciu, one of only two defendants who attended a preliminary hearing in July in the temporary courtroom at the Vatican Museums, insists he will prove his innocence “with respect to every charge”.

The trial, which is expected to last months, follows a two-year probe into how the Secretariat of State managed its vast asset portfolio and, in particular, who knew what about the disastrous 350-million-euro (now $407-million) London investment.

Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has vowed to clean up the Church’s finances.

The scandal is particularly embarrassing because funds used for risky ventures like the London one came from the Peter’s Pence, money donated by churchgoers for the pope’s charities.

– Risky investments –

Ahead of the trial, prosecutors painted a picture of risky investments with little or no oversight, and double-dealing by outside consultants and insiders trusted with the financial interests of the Secretariat of State.

The Catholic Church suffered a major loss when it purchased this London property in the upscale neighbourhood of Chelsea

The Catholic Church suffered a major loss when it purchased this London property in the upscale neighbourhood of Chelsea DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS AFP/File

The primary defendants are “actors in a rotten predatory and lucrative system, sometimes made possible thanks to limited, but very incisive, complicity and internal connivance,” they argued.

The current case dates from 2013, when the Secretariat borrowed more than $200 million, mainly from Credit Suisse, to invest in a Luxembourg fund managed by an Italian-Swiss businessman, Raffaele Mincione.

Half was intended for stock market purchases and the rest for part of the building in London’s Sloane Avenue.

Prosecutors allege Mincione used the money to invest in high-risk ventures over which the Church had no control. By 2018, the Secretariat had already lost millions and tried to pull out of the deal.

Another London-based financier, Gianluigi Torzi, was brought in to broker the purchase of the rest of the building and cut ties with Mincione. But he is accused of instead joining forces with him.

Torzi allegedly inserted a clause into the sale deal that gave himself control of the building through voting rights. He is accused of demanding 15 million euros to relinquish control.

Mincione and Torzi were helped, prosecutors claim, by Enrico Crasso, a former financial consultant to the Secretariat, and employee Fabrizio Tirabassi, both of whom face charges including fraud.

Also implicated are two former top officials within the Vatican’s financial affairs watchdog, including its ex-president, Swiss lawyer Rene Bruelhart, who prosecutors say did not do enough to protect the Secretariat’s interests.

Source: AFP

Just weeks after major surgery and despite the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis embarks Sunday on his 34th international trip with visits to Slovakia and Budapest, including talks with populist leader Viktor Orban.

The 84-year-old has a typically packed schedule — half a day in Budapest for a religious event and then three days in Slovakia — during which his physical health will be closely scrutinised.

In July, the pontiff spent 10 days in hospital after undergoing an operation for a type of diverticulitis, an inflammation in the intestine that required removing part of his colon.

The operation sparked rumours the Argentine might step down, but he laughed these off, insisting resigning never crossed his mind.

However, on his return from a historic visit to Iraq in March, the pope admitted it had been more tiring than other trips. As usual, his doctor will be on board Sunday.

– ‘Christian values’ –

Francis will begin his trip with a short stop in Budapest, presiding over mass at the International Eucharistic Congress, a week-long Catholic event.

It is not a state visit but a spiritual one, the Vatican emphasised, although the pope will have a meeting with Hungarian President Janos Ader and Prime Minister Orban.

Orban came to power on a promise to restore “Christian values” suppressed by years of communism, but many of the nationalist leader’s views are at odds with the pope’s, notably his anti-immigrant stance.

Asked in a recent interview what he would like to say to Orban, the pope appeared to dodge the question by suggesting the meeting was still not confirmed.

“I think he wanted to minimise the importance of the Orban meeting,” noted one observer who knows the pope well, but did not want to be named. Either way, the Vatican has confirmed the meeting.

The pope and the Hungarian leader have shaken hands twice before during events at the Vatican, in 2016 and 2017.

Hungary’s ambassador to the Holy See, Eduard Habsburg, said the 2017 meeting during a reception for European Union leaders to mark the bloc’s 60th anniversary was “extremely friendly”.

Before they shook hands, however, the pope had warned that Europe “risks dying” without a new vision of the principles of solidarity on which it was founded — and said this was the “most effective antidote” to modern populism.

Orban, who has a Protestant Calvinist background, opposes migration from Muslims into Europe so as not to destroy what he describes as the continent’s “cultural Christian heritage”.

“Viktor Orban is a straight-talking Hungarian,” said Habsburg, insisting the prime minister’s words were often reported with a negative bias.

He emphasised how much Orban had in common with the pope, such as “religious freedom, or persecuted Christians”.

In the last national census in 2011, only 39 percent of Hungarians identified as Catholics and 11 percent as Protestants. Among adherents, only 15 percent attended religious services.

– Solidarity in Slovakia –

On Sunday afternoon, the pope will fly to Slovakia, for a trip that will include meetings with the Jewish and Roma communities.

Francis has travelled to five continents since his election in 2013, but continues to prioritise smaller nations, especially in Europe. With this trip he will have visited 54 countries as pontiff.

Coronavirus remains a risk, with only half of adults in Slovakia fully vaccinated, compared to the EU average of more than 70 percent.

Initially, the government restricted papal events to those who had been fully vaccinated, but after complaints, expanded participation to those who test negative or have recently recovered from Covid-19.

Slovakia’s ambassador to the Holy See, Marek Lisansky, said the pope’s visit was a “unique moment” and a blessing for the country 5.4 million people, which has recorded 12,500 coronavirus deaths.

“The pope is coming in this incredible moment of pandemic to unite us and offer his solidarity,” he said.

Source:  AFP

A Rwandan national suspected of causing a major fire that ravaged the cathedral in the French city of Nantes last year murdered a Catholic priest in western France on Monday, the interior minister and a source close to the investigation said.

“All my support for the Catholics of our country after the dramatic murder of a priest in the Vendée region,” French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin wrote on Twitter, saying he was heading to the scene.

A source close to the investigation, who asked not to be named, told the AFP that the suspect had earlier gone to police in the town of Mortagne-sur-Sevre and declared he had killed a priest.

The slain priest, 60, had been welcoming the man into his church for several months, according to the source.

The man, a Rwandan national named as Emmanuel A., has confessed to being behind the fire at the Gothic Nantes cathedral that horrified France on July 18, 2020.

He had initially been placed under arrest before being freed under judicial control.

Earlier Monday, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who accuses the government of being weak on immigration, sought to capitalise on the incident, saying that in France “you can be an illegal migrant, set fire to a cathedral, not be expelled and then reoffend by murdering a priest”.

Darmanin immediately accused her of “making a polemic without knowing the facts” saying the man could not be expelled from France while he was under judicial control.

Immigration is set to be a major issue when Le Pen challenges centrist President Emmanuel Macron for the presidency next year.

Senator Bruno Retailleau, a conservative who represents the Vendée region, identified the victim as Olivier Maire. He said the local Catholic church had been housing the man.

“Deeply shocked by the terrible murder of a priest who had taken in his murderer into his care,” Retailleau said on Twitter.

“What was this man still doing in France?” asked the lawmaker, who is among several Les Républicains members likely to seek that party’s nomination for the 2022 presidential election.

Priceless artefacts lost in 2020 blaze

The Nantes blaze came 15 months after the devastating 2019 fire at the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, which raised questions about the security risks for other historic churches across France.

While firefighters were able to contain the Nantes blaze after just two hours and save the main structure, its famed organ, which dated from 1621 and had survived the French revolution and World War II bombardment, was destroyed.

Also lost were priceless artefacts and paintings, including a work by the 19th-century artist Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin and stained glass windows that contained remnants of 16th-century glass. Repairs are due to take several years.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)

A financial scandal involving an opaque, loss-making Vatican property deal paid for with charity funds goes to trial Tuesday after a two-year probe that has implicated a once-powerful cardinal.

Vatican prosecutors allege that ten defendants, including high-rolling London financiers and church employees, engaged in various crimes such as embezzlement, fraud, and corruption.

It is unclear whether former cardinal Angelo Becciu, then number two at the powerful Secretariat of State, will appear in the makeshift courtroom held within the Vatican Museums on the trial’s opening day.

Becciu, 73, who says he is the innocent victim of a plot, is the highest-profile defendant embroiled in the Church’s ruinous purchase of a 17,000-sq metre London property in the upmarket neighbourhood of Chelsea under his watch.

The case against Becciu, which carries charges of embezzlement, abuse of office and witness tampering, also includes separate allegations over hundreds of thousands of euros of church funds paid to his brother’s charity.

The trial ensnaring the former right-hand man to Pope Francis — who was fired by the pontiff in September and stripped of his privileges as cardinal — represents the first time a cardinal has been indicted by Vatican criminal prosecutors in modern history.  

Bags of money

The complex case alleged by prosecutors paints a picture of dubious, risky investments involving millions of dollars of Vatican money, little or no oversight, and double-dealing by outside consultants and insiders trusted with the financial interests of the Secretariat of State, the Vatican’s most important department charged with general affairs and diplomacy.

A 487-page indictment released earlier this month sheds light on hefty bank transfers, text messages between collaborators from seized cellphones — even bags of money changing hands and secret meetings in luxury hotels.

The primary defendants are “actors in a rotten predatory and lucrative system, sometimes made possible thanks to limited, but very incisive, complicity and internal connivance,” wrote prosecutors.

Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has vowed to clean up the Church’s finances, dogged for decades by scandal. After a 2019 raid on the Secretariat’s offices by Vatican police, Francis stripped the body of oversight of its own funds, handing that responsibility to others.

The scandal is particularly embarrassing because funds used for risky ventures, including the disastrous 350-million-euro ($415 million) investment in Chelsea, came from the Peter’s Pence, an annual fund for the pope’s charities.

Risky ventures

The current case dates from 2013, when the Secretariat borrowed more than $200 million, mainly from Credit Suisse, to invest in a Luxembourg fund managed by an Italian-Swiss businessman, Raffaele Mincione. Half was intended for stock market purchases and the rest for part of the London building.

Mincione, prosecutors allege, used the money to invest in high-risk ventures over which the Church had no control. By 2018, the Secretariat had already lost millions and tried to pull out of the deal.

But another London-based financier, Gianluigi Torzi, brought in to broker the purchase of the rest of the building and cut ties with Mincione, instead joined forces with him, say prosecutors.

Torzi arranged for the Holy See to give Mincione £40 million to buy out the financier’s share of the London property, but allegedly inserted a clause into the deal that gave himself control of the building through voting rights.

Torzi is accused of demanding 15 million euros to relinquish control.

Mincione and Torzi were helped, prosecutors claim, by Enrico Crasso, a former financial consultant to the Secretariat, and employee Fabrizio Tirabassi, both of whom face charges including fraud.

Also implicated are two former top officials within the Vatican’s financial regulator, including its ex-president, Swiss lawyer Rene Bruelhart, whom prosecutors say did not do enough to protect the Secretariat’s interests.

In another twist, Becciu is accused of paying defendant Cecilia Marogna 575,000 euros in Vatican funds earmarked for freeing captive priests and nuns abroad that Marogna — dubbed “the Cardinal’s lady” by the Italian press — spent on luxury goods and hotels.

Prosecutors claim the Vatican’s top hierarchy, including Becciu’s boss and pope ally Cardinal Pietro Parolin, were in favour of the London venture, but unaware of its financial details.

Source: AFP

Thousands of Nigerians have been paying their last respects this week to Temitope Balogun Joshua, one of Africa’s most popular televangelists, known as T.B. Joshua.

The controversial Nigerian-born pastor died about a month ago at the age of 57.

A memorial service was held for him Thursday at the auditorium of the Lagos headquarters of the megachurch he founded, Synagogue Church Of All Nations. The ceremony was aired live by his Emmanuel Television Station.

Joshua’s body, dressed in a white suit and in a transparent casket, was displayed as mourners, many weeping, filed past, including people visiting from different parts of the world to pay their respects.

Joshua was noted for making predictions and for his claims to cure various ailments and to make people prosper through miracles. He was, however, controversial, with critics questioning his claims of cures and alleging that he profited from desperate people seeking hope.

More than 15,000 people from Nigeria and abroad attended Joshua’s Sunday services in the stadium-like church, including many African presidents, senior government officials, international soccer players, musicians and other high-profile celebrities. Joshua’s popularity reached across Africa and to South America where he held many religious crusades.

In September 2014, the guest house of the Lagos church collapsed, killing more than 100 people, most of them foreigners who were in Nigeria to attend his services.

While authorities say the building collapsed because of structural defects, T.B. Joshua insisted the building was blown up by a small plane that he claimed flew over it shortly before it tumbled down.

Tributes and services have been held all week. Joshua will be buried Friday. He is survived by his widow and three children.

Source: Africa News

Pope Francis expressed his “affection” for the American people as he met at length Monday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, with the latter declining to delve into “domestic politics” when later asked if the two discussed a campaign by U.S. bishops to deny Communion to Catholic politicians like the U.S. president who support abortion rights.

The Vatican said the two spoke for about 40 minutes, a long time considering that Blinken isn’t the top U.S. administration leader.

The closed-door meeting in the Apostolic Palace “played out in a cordial atmosphere,” a Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said. The meeting, “was, for the pope the occasion to recall his 2015 visit and to express his affection and his attention to the people of the United States of America.”

Bruni was referring to the pontiff’s U.S. pilgrimage, which included a meeting at the White House with then President Barack Obama. In recent years, the U.S. church hierarchy has been increasingly more polarized about U.S. politics and politicians.

Many of the more conservative U.S. bishops have been clamoring for a clear directive from their ranks against giving Communion to U.S. political figures who are Roman Catholics and support women’s right to abortion. Vatican teaching forbids abortion as a grave sin. This campaign puts the heat on President Joe Biden, a Catholic who has said that while he personally opposes abortion, he supports abortion rights.

Earlier this month, the U.S. churchmen decided to go ahead and craft a document about Communion. Only a month earlier, Francis’ top official on doctrinal orthodoxy had urged the bishops to think the matter through thoroughly and aim to keep divisions to the minimum.

Blinken declined to wade into the issue when he was asked at a news conference in Rome after his Vatican visit if he and Francis had discussed the divisive issue.

“One of the luxuries of my job is that I don’t do domestic politics,” said Blinken, who described his talks with the pope as ”extremely warm and very wide-ranging.”

Francis himself hasn’t weighed in publicly on the latest squabble in the long-running wrangling over the Communion issue within the U.S. Conference of Bishops.

Blinken had high praise for Francis and the opportunity to be the highest level official in the fledgling Biden administration to have a sit-down session with the pontiff.

“I was very gratified by the meeting and gratified as well by the strong leadership of His Holiness on the pandemic, on climate change, his leadership on the basic proposition that we have to stand for human dignity in whatever we do,” Blinken said.

Blinken’s spokesman, Ned Price, said the secretary had assured the pontiff about “the United States’ commitment to working closely with the Holy See to address global challengers and the needs of the world’s least fortunate and most vulnerable, including refugees and migrants.”

That would generally synch with Francis’ overarching agenda of putting those living on life’s margin at the center of attention.

Blinken also thanked Francis for “longstanding leadership” on the need to tackle climate change. Early in his papacy, Francis issued an encyclical, or formal teaching document, stressing the need to treasure and protect the environment.

Last year, when Blinken’s predecessor, Mike Pompeo, came to the Vatican, he wasn’t granted any private time with Francis. At the time, Vatican officials explained that the Holy See didn’t want to give any impression of favoritism only weeks before the U.S. presidential election.

Pompeo had blasted the Vatican for what he said was a lessening of its moral authority by signing an accord with Beijing over the nominations of Chinese bishops. Pompeo had insisted that the Holy See take a tougher stand against Chinese restrictions on religious freedom.

Biden, for his part, has criticized China for forced labor practices. Blinken’s spokesperson said the secretary and Francis discussed China as well as humanitarian crises in Lebanon, Syria, the Tigray region of Ethiopia and Venezuela, the latter nation’s economic and social plight often drawing attention by Francis, who is a South American native.

Human rights and religious freedom in China were also discussed in Blinken’s separate talks with the Holy See’s No. 2, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, and with Archbishop Paul Gallagher, its foreign minister.

Blinken stressed U.S. support for a return to democracy in Venezuela and “our desire to help the Venezuelan people rebuild their country,” Price said.

At the Vatican, Blinken on Monday was also given a guided, private tour of the Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling frescoed by Michelangelo and other Renaissance masterpieces. Price tweeted that he and Blinken toured the “breathtaking Sistine Chapel.”

Blinken visited Rome before flying to southern Italy for Tuesday’s Group of 20 meeting of foreign ministers, which is focused on improving collaboration among nations on climate change, health issues and development.

 Source: AP

Temitope Balogun Joshua popularly referred to as T. B. Joshua died on Saturday at the age of 57.

He died just seven days to his birthday.

Here are quick facts about the leader and founder of The Synagogue, Church of All Nations (SCOAN).

1. Joshua was born on 12 June 1963 after he spent 15 months in his mother’s womb and narrowly avoided death after a quarry explosion near his house sent rocks through its roof just seven days after his birth.

2. T.B Joshua was formerly called Balogun Francis.

3. He attended St. Stephen’s Anglican Primary School in Arigidi Akoko, Nigeria, between 1971 and 1977, but failed to complete one year of secondary school education.

4. He worked in various casual jobs after his schooling had ended, including carrying chicken waste at a poultry farm.

5. Joshua attempted to join the Nigerian military but was thwarted due to a train breakdown that left him stranded en route to the military academy.

6. He started his church in 1987.

7. According to The Guardian UK, his church attracts more weekly attendees than the combined number of visitors to Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London.

8. Joshua is “YouTube’s most popular Pastor with over 1,000,000 subscribers.

9. In 2008, he received the Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR) by the Nigerian government.

10. He was also voted the Yoruba man of the decade by Pan-Yoruba media outlet Irohin-Odua in 2008.

11. He was called one of Africa’s 50 most influential people by Pan-African magazines The Africa Report and New African Magazine.

12. As of 2011, according to Forbes, Joshua was Nigeria’s third-richest pastor, although the claim was immediately denied in a statement by the church.

13. He was known to be controversial, and was even ‘blacklisted’ by the government of Cameroon in 2010.

Source: PMNews Nigeria