Cuba: Pope Francis Makes Andrew Cuomo Proud

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Big deals and a bright Cuban Francisfuture

Big deals and a bright Cuban Francisfuture

Local New York CBS reports:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expected to return to New York from Cuba on Tuesday with two major business deals in hand.

As CBS2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reported, although the trade mission was supposed to be about developing future business, the group actually came back to the states with two deals made, including one where an upstate medical facility is going to be able to run clinical trials of a lung cancer vaccine developed by Cubans.

That’s what’s been going on in Cuba all these years.  They developed a vaccine for lung cancer!  Thank you Pope Francis for this new arrangement.  Obama couldn’t have done it without you.  Can I be in the clinical trial?

Cuomo, who became the first U.S. governor to visit Cuba in decades, said he also laid the groundwork for more New York-based businesses to get a foot in the door on the island nation.

Oh, no news yet on any U.S. businesses starting up in Cuba though.

“We believe this is going to be a dramatic change that is going to be to the benefit of the people of Cuba and also to the people of the United States,” Cuomo said.

While the embargo would have to be lifted by Congress, President Barack Obama can grant licenses to businesses to trade with Cuba.

So the embargo is still in effect except when Obama says it isn’t.  There are so many laws like that now!

The governor was accompanied by other New York lawmakers and executives from JetBlue, MasterCard, Pfizer, Chobani and other companies.

Cuomo took a tour of a new nearly $10 million deep water Port of Mariel, which could be just the ticket for New York businesses to get their goods to Cuba and the rest of Latin America.

Cuomo is no stranger to big construction projects, but still, he was suitably impressed with the Cuban government’s efforts to build a massive commercial port and duty free zone west of Havana that could revolutionize the way Cuba does business, Kramer reported.

“We have had a friendship that went on for decades. It is about rekindling that friendship,” Cuomo said.

What is it with New York Italians, politicians, unions, ports, big construction projects, places like Cuba, and Catholic bishops?

Cuomo also met with Cuban Roman Catholic Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino while in Havana.

The governor expressed admiration for the cardinal’s efforts in expanding the church’s reach in the Communist-ruled country.

“We’re very proud of what his eminence has done,” Cuomo said. “We’re very proud of what the Catholic church has done.”

Isn’t that nice?  Andrew Cuomo is very proud of our Church.  I guess we can all be proud of that then.

When asked if his decision to move so quickly to help end the embargo had anything to do with his late father Mario, Cuomo said “My father said isolation is not going to work. Isolation is just going to cause bitterness and it’s going to accomplish nothing.”

Back in New York, Republicans called the governor’s trade mission a political stunt.

One lawmaker said it was offensive to Cuban-Americans whose families have been victims of the Castros’ rule.

Who was that one lawmaker?  What a silly thing to say.  Castro is nice now.  It was all America’s bitter isolation as they sinned against dialogue, encounter, accompaniment, heartfelt closeness, and that Catholicism whose flag Communism stole.

 

 

 

 

Finn Removal: Before It’s Over FrancisChurch Will Be So Squeaky Clean There Won’t Be a Catholic Left

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Problem Solved!

Problem Solved!

If Francis truly were the ‘peoples’ pope’ he would actually care about Catholic people – you know those Pharisees who need ‘religious observances’ out of pride and mental illness, but won’t ever get to Heaven.

Real Catholic faithful and clergy loved Kansas City Bishop Finn.  The National Catholic Reporter didn’t.  True Catholics in Chile are furious Pope Francis would give them a Bishop like Juan Barros, but Francis doesn’t care what people like that think, does he?

The more outraged real Catholics become, the more he seems to like it.

Parishioners in a southern Chile diocese are gathering wherever their new bishop appears, but their presence is not the sort of assembly the Catholic Church would expect.

In the month since Bishop Juan Barros was installed in Osorno, the priest has had to sneak out of back exits, call on riot police to shepherd him from the city’s cathedral and coordinate movements with bodyguards and police canine units.

Such is the public routine of the bishop who is denounced by his opponents as having shielded Chile’s most notorious pedophile priest. For his part, Barros says relations are improving.

Meaning: the crowd is giving up and getting accustomed to my infernal presence.

The appointment of Barros by Pope Francis has unleashed an unprecedented protest, with more than 1,300 church members, 30 diocesan priests and nearly half of Chile’s Parliament sending letters urging the pope to reconsider.

They may be emboldened after Francis on Tuesday accepted the resignation of a U.S. bishop, Robert Finn, who pleaded guilty to failing to report a suspected abuser, answering calls by victims to hold priests accountable and ensure children are protected.

At least three men say Barros was present when they were sexually molested in the 1980s and 1990s by the Rev. Fernando Karadima. Karadima was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2011 for sexually abusing minors, ordered to live out his life cloistered in a nun’s convent. Barros has said he knew nothing of Karadima’s abuses.

The controversy is being watched by victims, advocacy groups and lawmakers as a test of the pope’s promises to crack down on clerical sex abuse. On April 12, members on the pope’s sex abuse advisory committee traveled to Rome to voice their concerns.

Well, he’s cracked down now in Missouri!  Still, you can’t remove every bishop that inspires a peep of protest.  You must pick and choose. After all, what’s the point of this whole priest-pedophilia abuse dance anyway if you can’t use it to intimidate and banish honest clergy?

And what’s the point of approving a gay ambassador to the Vatican if he’s barely even gay and he’s faithful?

What’s even wrong with gay pedophilia?  They teach gayness to four years-olds now and all the GOP Presidential candidates are terrified into attending gay weddings.  When a man is your mother and a woman is a husband anything goes, except Catholicism.

 

Francis: Being Protestant Doesn’t Matter to God if Muslims Kill You

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ISIS making people one with the Church

ISIS making people one with the Church

At the Register Edward Pentin reports on the Pope’s response to the brutal new Mass execution of Christians on another Beach in Ethiopia.  To the Orthodox Patriarch Pope Francis offers his ‘heartfelt spiritual closeness.’

Pope Francis this evening sent a message of solidarity to Patriarch Matthias of the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church following the release of a video showing the killing of 28 Ethiopian Christians by Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists in Libya.

“With great distress and sadness I learn of the further shocking violence perpetrated against innocent Christians in Libya,” the Pope wrote, adding that he was reaching out to Patriarch Matthias and his flock “in heartfelt spiritual solidarity to assure you of my closeness in prayer at the continuing martyrdom being so cruelly inflicted on Christians in Africa, the Middle East and some parts of Asia.”

I got railroaded into a sort of therapeutic session recently where the counselor-type kept asking me to speak from the heart.  I finally told him that I try and say everything from the heart.  If it didn’t sound like it to him, he’d just have to get used to it.

It’s like when people say, “Honestly, I must tell you…..”  It makes me wonder if the other things they say are dishonest.  And if you must tell me then don’t.  I only want to hear the things you choose to say.

So why the Pope must assure the Patriarch that he feels things in his heart, or that he is close in spirit (whatever that means), is anyone’s guess.

Finally, I hope no-one ever sends me a note assuring me of solidarity.  It’s an awful word that the Pope seems to think means Christian charity, but most people think means free stuff, and sensible people know means Socialism.

“It makes no difference whether the victims are Catholic, Copt, Orthodox or Protestant,” the Pope went on. “Their blood is one and the same in their confession of Christ! The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard by everyone who can still distinguish between good and evil. All the more this cry must be heard by those who have the destiny of peoples in their hands.”

Pope Francis has often referred to an “ecumenism of blood”, saying that persecution is uniting Christians. “They are witnesses to Jesus Christ,” he said in January.”They are persecuted and killed because they are Christians. Those who persecute them make no distinction between the religious communities to which they belong. They are Christians and for that they are persecuted. This, brothers and sisters, is the ecumenism of blood.”

This Francis-ism, the ‘ecumenism of blood,’ is nasty.  It’s bad enough to send a useless sentimental letter to a bishop who’s flock is being slaughtered by Muslims, but to use the event to push the lie that all murdered Christians are united in Heaven despite vast deficiencies in faith is truly dark.  I would imagine most Orthodox bishops in these serious regions might find it a tad opportunistic.

And hey, if the Muslims make no distinctions in killing Christians then the dead MUST all be Catholics, Yes?  Or does that even matter?