Vatican Newspaper Editor Accused of Gay Smear against Rival
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The editor of the Vatican's daily newspaper has been accused of engineering a dirty tricks campaign against a rival with false accusations of a gay affair and harassment.

The alleged plot has been revealed in a controversial new book that portrays the Vatican as a hotbed of jealousy, intrigue and underhanded factional fighting.

The book, "His Holiness – The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI", is based on hundreds of letters, memos and diplomatic cables which were leaked by Vatican whistle-blowers, including one code-named "Maria".

One of the most intriguing claims is that Gian Maria Vian, the editor of L'Osservatore Romano, leaked false documents which purported to show that Dino Boffo, the editor of another Catholic newspaper, L'Avvenire, had had a homosexual affair with a man and harassed his wife.

The furore over the claims, which erupted in 2009, forced Mr Boffo to resign from the editorship. » | Nick Squires, Rome | Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Vatican Slams New Book of Leaked Documents as ‘Criminal’ »

Vatican's Official Newspaper Says Science Cannot Explain Turin Shroud
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The Vatican's official newspaper has given strong endorsement to research by Italian scientists which suggests that the Turin Shroud cannot be a medieval fake and may be the authentic burial cloth of Christ.

"For science, the shroud continues to be an 'impossible object' – impossible to falsify," L'Osservatore Romano said in a lengthy article on Thursday.

After conducting five years of advanced laser experiments, a team of experts from Enea, the National Agency for New Technologies and Energy, concluded that the imprint of a bearded man's face and crucified body could not be reproduced by modern scientific techniques.

The 14-ft-long, 3.5-ft-wide cloth was therefore not a medieval fake, the team said.
They concluded that the iconic image was created by "some form of electromagnetic energy (such as a flash of light at short wavelength)".

The researchers presented their results with "extreme caution" and had stopped short of putting forward theories that "strayed from science", the Vatican daily said.

But the implication of their work was that the enigmatic marks on the cloth were created at the moment of Christ's Resurrection by some sort of miracle. » | Nick Squires, Rome | Thursday, December 29, 2011

Vatican Thumbs Up for Karl Marx after Galileo, Darwin and Oscar Wilde
TIMES ONLINE: Karl Marx, who famously described religion as “the opium of the people”, has joined Galileo, Charles Darwin and Oscar Wilde on a growing list of historical figures to have undergone an unlikely reappraisal by the Roman Catholic Church.

L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said yesterday that Marx’s early critiques of capitalism had highlighted the “social alienation” felt by the “large part of humanity” that remained excluded, even now, from economic and political decision-making.

Georg Sans, a German-born professor of the history of contemporary philosophy at the pontifical Gregorian University, wrote in an article that Marx’s work remained especially relevant today as mankind was seeking “a new harmony” between its needs and the natural environment. He also said that Marx’s theories may help to explain the enduring issue of income inequality within capitalist societies.

“We have to ask ourselves, with Marx, whether the forms of alienation of which he spoke have their origin in the capitalist system,” Professor Sans wrote. “If money as such does not multiply on its own, how are we to explain the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few?”

With reassessments such as these it may be wondered which formerly unacceptable figure could be next. Last year the Vatican erected a statue of Galileo as a way of saying sorry for trying the astronomer in 1633 for his observation that the Earth moved around the Sun; in February a leading official declared Darwin’s theory of evolution compatible with the Christian faith, and in July L’Osservatore praised Oscar Wilde, the gay playwright, as “a man who behind a mask of amorality asked himself what was just and what was mistaken”.

Professor Sans argues that Marx’s intellectual legacy was marred by the misappropriation of his work by the communist regimes of the 20th century. “It is no exaggeration to say that nothing has damaged the interests of Marx the philosopher more than Marxism,” he said.

This overturns a century of Catholic hostility to his creed. Two years ago Benedict XVI singled out Marxism as one of the great scourges of the modern age. “The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful destruction of the human spirit,” he told an audience in Brazil. >>> Richard Owen in Rome | Thursday, October 22, 2009

Numbers of Nuns and Monks Decline by 10%
Photo of Audrey Hepburn as Sister Luke in ‘The Nun’s Story’ (1959) courtesy of Google Images
BBC: The Vatican has reported a further dramatic fall in the number of Roman Catholic monks and nuns worldwide.

Newly published statistics showed that the number of men and women belonging to religious orders fell by 10% to just under a million between 2005 and 2006.

During the pontificate of the late Pope John Paul II, the number of Catholic nuns worldwide declined by a quarter.

The downward trend accelerated despite a steady increase in the membership of the Catholic Church to more than 1.1bn.

However, correspondents say even this failed to keep pace with the overall increase in world population.

Dramatic fall

On the back page of its official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican published on Monday new statistics revealing that between 2005 and 2006 the number "members of the consecrated life" fell by just under 10%.

The number of members, predominantly women, some engaged only in constant prayer, others working as teachers, health workers and missionaries, fell 94,790 to 945,210. Catholic nuns and monks decline >>>

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Vatican Newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, Condemns Harry Potter
THE TELEGRAPH: An article in the Vatican’s official newspaper has condemned JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books for posing a danger to children by promoting witchcraft and the occult.

In a damning indictment of the bestselling books, among the most successful in publishing history, the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, has called the teenage boy wizard “the wrong kind of hero”.

Under the headline 'The double face of Harry Potter’, the lengthy article concludes: “Despite the values that we come across in the narration, at the base of this story, witchcraft is proposed as a positive ideal. 



"The violent manipulation of things and people comes thanks to knowledge of the occult. “The ends justify the means because the knowledgeable, the chosen ones, the intellectuals know how to control the dark powers and turn them into good. 



“This a grave and deep lie, because it is the old Gnostic temptation of confusing salvation and truth with a secret knowledge.” JK Rowling's Harry Potter condemned in Vatican newspaper >>> By Malcolm Moore and Nigel Reynolds

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