Article: Nagasaki, the City of the Atomic Bomb – And of the Christian Martyrs

From Chiesa:
In effect, among the victims of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, two thirds of the small but vibrant Japanese Catholic community disappeared in a single day. It was a community that was nearly wiped out twice in three centuries.
In 1945, this was done through an act of war that was mysteriously focused on [...]

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Report: Italian premier revives old Canterbury-to-Rome pilgrimage route

From Catholic World News:
Rome, Oct. 30, 2007 (CWNews.com) – Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi held a ceremony on October 29 to unveil the first in a series of over 1,500 signs that are being posted to revive the ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome, the Via Francigena.
Prodi told Italian reporters that the attention [...]

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Theme: St. Vibiana Dishonored

Her parents, Flavian and Dafrosa, were martyred in the persecution of Julian the Apostate, and Vivian [Vibiana] and her sister Demetria were turned over to a woman named Rufina who tried to force her into prostitution. Upon her continued refusal, Vivian was imprisoned in a mad house, then flogged to death.
- From Catholic Forum
* [...]

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Portrait: Blessed Charles of Austria

From The Beatification of Europe’s Heart: Emperor Charles of Austria, James Bogle, The Remnant, October 15, 2005:
For his commitment to peace and his attempt to free his own peoples and all the peoples of Europe from the most devastating war in history, the Blessed Emperor was rewarded with exile first in Switzerland and then Madeira, [...]

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Article: The Muslim Letter to the Pope

Robert Spencer / Human Events:
Tauran observed that the possibility of serious dialogue between Muslims and Christians was limited by the traditional Islamic understanding of the Muslim holy book: “Muslims,” he said, “do not accept that one can discuss the Koran in depth, because they say it was written by dictation from God. With such an [...]

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Report: Iraqi Archbishop appeals to world to help Iraqi Christians

From Catholic News Agency:
Baghdad, Oct 17, 2007 / 11:04 am (CNA).- The Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Basilios Georges Casmoussa, has called on Christians around the world to help Iraqi Christians.
Speaking to the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), he urged Christians to pressure political leaders to help those peoples whom [...]

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Report: The rise of mosques becomes catalyst for conflict across Europe

From The Guardian:
From London’s docklands to the rolling hills of Tuscany, from southern Austria to Amsterdam and Cologne, the issue of Islamic architecture and its impact on citadels of “western civilisation” is increasingly contentious.
(…)
Next door in Austria the far right leader Jörg Haider is also calling for a ban in his province of Carinthia, even [...]

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Article: How the West might find God again

Interview with Mary Eberstadt in MercatorNet:
The problem for conventional secularisation theory is that it amounts to a one-way street, a one-way description of how religiosity waxes or wanes. That description at its briefest goes something like, “I think, and what I think about religion goes on to determine other things I do,” like having a [...]

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Blog Spotlight: Andrew Cusack on “The Church Resurgent”

Andrew Cusack:
THE CATHOLIC COLONY of Maryland was first planted in 1634 at St. Mary’s, which became the first capital city of the Calvert family’s palatinate. The attempt to run Terra Mariae as a Catholic feudal state was continually frustrated by a number of fiery Protestant settlers, who eventually broke out into open rebellion in the [...]

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Report: Long-lost text lifts cloud from Knights Templar

From MSNBC:
The Vatican has published secret documents about the trial of the Knights Templar, including a parchment — long ignored because of a vague catalog entry in 1628 — showing that Pope Clement V initially absolved the medieval order of heresy.
(…)
According to the Vatican archives Web site, the parchment shows that Clement initially absolved the [...]

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