Gloria.TV News on the 20th of July 2015

Very Interreligious: In September 2014 the Masonic Lodge "Mark Master Masons No. 1954” was launched with a ceremony in the Masonic Museum in Zwettl, Austria. The lodge meets in Vienna and is a branch of the United Grand Lodge of England. For the event, Father Michael Wenninger celebrated a public Mass in Zwettl. The same day he was installed with special rites as a Masonic chaplain. Wenninger is a widower and former diplomat who was ordained in 2011 for Vienna Archdiocese. He is working in the Vatican for the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

Pontifical Gaffe: During his talk to the representatives of civil society in Asunciòn, Paraguay, Pope Francis abandonned his manuscript. Speaking off the cutt he said that he was asked to plead for somebody who was abducted by the army and whose name he did not hear well. In front of Paraguay’s president Horacio Cartes Francis made strong accusations comparing the case with the crimes of Stalinism and Nazism. Later it turned out that this was about Edelio Murinigo, an officer abducted not by the regular army - as Francis had understood - but by a self-styled "Army of the People", a Communist terrorist group. Magister comments: “Despite his confessed ignorance about the case, Francis was not afraid to use the badly collected data to accuse the Paraguayan President of terrible crimes. Honor to Cartes who let the impressive public affront drop into the void.

Useful Idiots: Early July, Waldron Mercy Academy, a private Catholic school in Philadelphia archdiocese laid off a teacher living in a homosex liaison. Archbishop Chaput supported the decision. As a consequence he received e-mails with epithets like “child molesting sack of sh*t”, “go f**k yourself” or “rot in hell”. Georg Weigel reminds us of the promise that, once gay pseudomarriage were introduced the culture wars would abate. Quote: “The useful idiots who insist that, if the bishops of the U.S. would just retreat from the culture wars, all would be well, are manifesting their ignorance of the requirements of pastoral leadership while unwittingly confessing to a degree of political stupidity that is staggering.”

Nothing Ready: On December 8th – in five month - the so called Year of Mercy, wanted by Pope Francis, will begin, but the city of Rome has no plan yet how to receive the 5 millon expected visitors. The Vatican has not even understood yet who is the contact person in the City Council. Rome’s mayor Ignazio Marino, a self-professed Catholic, belongs to the former Communist Party and is a very strong supporter of the homosex cause and of euthanasia.