“The absence of reaction is a sign of death! Consequently, the good cases of resistance – and even those not quite so good – are necessary and merit being listened to, welcomed and their expression encouraged,” Pope Francis said Thursday, addressing the Roman Curia.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/371325-pope-vatican-reform-speech/

Hope lies not in headlines but in the more tedious realm of statistics. Five years ago, the American scientist Steven Pinker wrote a book The Better Angels of Our Nature, seeking to compute the gains and losses of humankind over recent centuries. His sum was overwhelmingly positive – and despite “miserabilist” critics has stood the test of time.

Violence, said Pinker, has vastly diminished. Both inter-state and civil conflicts are less common, and less deadly, than at any time in history.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/28/hope-things-get-be...

Here I would start to worry. All you need is a mad man or woman to press the wrong button to destroy the planet. Despite the comforting words that Steven Pinker and Simon Jenkins promote, we're still at one minute to midnight from planetary destuction... That we've improved our "western" lot is not representative of people living in the Syrian terrorist infected areas, nor is it representative of people in detention centers on Manus Island et al. At this stage, the scoundrels have moved up in the echelons of power after realising that robbing a bank is easier to do via the internet or by bedding the bank managers, than by violent means. Only the morons at the bottom of the pile would try to rob a bank teller considering there is no more than petty cash behind the counter. But basically there are still a lot of murders in the US for that modern bread and butter: drugs.

So we're enjoying a violence free moment and many boomers consider themselves lucky for having escaped major wars in their own backyard after having protested against the Vietnam War. Since then all the other wars have been fought with illusions of necessity brought on by a) embedding journalists and b) having a promotional propaganda advertising style to what governments lie to do.

Press relase: you are feeling good and there is no bad news in your pants... Mind you is the news of "global warming" a bad news story? The idea here is the more we're ignorant of it, the better we feel.

Sure.

May this year, 2017 — the year 4,568,254,017 on the universal calendaroo — be the best ever for this little planet of small and living thingsters.

Best. G

The Knights of Malta were first recognized in the 12th century; now, the conservative order runs a vast humanitarian operation across the globe. According to the Catholic news website Crux, the Knights of Malta have 13,500 members and some 100,000 staff and volunteers. They maintain bilateral relations with 106 countries, have United Nations permanent observer status, and issue their own passports, currency and postage stamps, printed with the Maltese cross.

Now, their grand master has resigned after a public standoff with Pope Francis over, of all things, condoms.

The saga begins in 2013, when as part of charitable work the order was doing in Myanmar, condoms were handed out as a way to prevent the spread of HIV. Albrecht Boeselager, who was health minister of the order when the distribution took place, said he didn't know about the condom distribution when it started and stopped it when he did. Boeselager went on to become Grand Chancellor of the order — and when the news came out that impoverished Burmese had gotten their hands on condoms because of him a few years ago, he refused to resign. So the order sacked him.

That caught Pope Francis's attention. The pope ordered an inquiry into whether Boeselager's firing was legal, the order called the inquiry "irrelevant," and last week, Grand Master Matthew Festing resigned at the request of the pope, DW reports.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201702051050376173-pope-attacked-in-posters/

When Pope Francis was elected nearly four years ago, on 13 March 2013, he was escorted – like every pope before him – from the Sistine Chapel to the Room of Tears. It is the place where a new pope pauses for a moment – and no doubt many of them do shed a few tears, thinking of the momentous responsibility upon their shoulders – before stepping out on to the balcony of St Peter’s to greet the world as the new leader of the Roman Catholic church.

When Francis, known until then as Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, first appeared that night, he appeared remarkably sanguine, joking that the cardinals had gone to the ends of the Earth to choose the next pope. If he’d had any inkling of what these last four years would be like, he would surely have wept in that Room of Tears.

While hugely popular across the globe with Catholics and non-Catholics alike, Francis has struggled against fierce opposition from the Vatican establishment to haul the Roman Catholic church into the 21st century, fought to reform its government, tried to persuade cardinals to revise their thinking on the divorced and remarried, and been openly opposed by rebel prelates.

Last week marked the start of Lent, one of the most important periods of the church’s calendar, a time when Catholics fast, give alms and reflect on humanity’s sinfulness in the run-up to their commemoration of the crucifixion and of Easter. It is usually marked by quiet prayerfulness, and on Sunday the pope, along with members of the Roman Curia, will leave Rome to begin a five-day retreat. He will leave a Vatican beset by tension, turmoil and rebellion. There are even rumours that growing numbers of Vatican hands think he should quit.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/04/vatican-civil-war-conserva...

rock star