Vatican Archives - OnlySky Media

Forgotten gods: When we buried Summanus’s lightning

by Captain Cassidy May 29, 2023Aug 28, 2023

Reading Time: 9 minutes He was at one time a god so widely respected and feared that Romans went to great lengths to escape his power. But by the first century BCE, he had fallen into such obscurity that Ovid could refer to “a shrine dedicated to Summanus, whoever
he is.” What can the followers of other gods learn from his fate?

Comedy

Catholic Church announces makeover

by Barry Purcell Feb 13, 2023Feb 13, 2023

Reading Time: 2 minutes The Roman Catholic Church announced yesterday that the organization will change its name to Candle as part of a major rebranding. The head of the Vatican’s marketing team, Cardinal Lampeter, delivered the news. “Polling indicated that people mostly know us as a global network of pedophile-enablers,” said Lampeter. “Unfortunately, it’s hard to move forward when all […]

History

Remembering the Catholic Church’s role in the immolation of Vietnam

by Barry Purcell Jan 02, 2023Jan 02, 2023

Reading Time: 6 minutes Nearly sixty years after a Vietnamese Buddhist monk set himself on fire in Saigon, we have largely forgotten the reason—not the US invasion, but an oppressive Roman Catholic regime that precipitated what came to be called the Buddhist crisis.

It’s time for the Catholic Church to acknowledge its active hand in that disaster and the war that followed.

News

Op-ed: Paris trial sent an appalling message to clerical abusers

by Keith Porteous Wood Dec 30, 2020

Reading Time: 3 minutes LAST month, the Pope’s former Ambassador to France, ex-Papal Nuncio Luigi Ventura, above, was tried for sexually assaulting five young men, including a Paris City Hall official. One of the complainants’ lawyers suggested that the charges represented ‘the tip of the iceberg’. Ventura, who fled France to return to the Vatican, was found guilty and […]

News

Op-ed: Vatican abuse summit was an exercise in arse-covering

by Ophelia Benson Feb 26, 2019

Reading Time: 4 minutes BARRY Duke has pointed out the cowardice and uselessness of the Vatican’s latest bafflegab on priestly child rape, but it’s a subject that frankly requires a lot of hostile commentary, and I want to dig into the theology of it all. The Holy See Press Office (yes really, that’s what it calls itself) has kindly […]

Ethics and Morality

Why is the Vatican a State?

by Bert Bigelow Sep 04, 2016

Reading Time: 3 minutes [This was written a few years ago when the pedophile priest scandal was at its peak. The scandal seems to have died down, but the questions that were raised have not gone away.] The central office of the Catholic Church, The Vatican, is considered a nation. No other religion is accorded this honor. Why does […]

Ethics and Morality

Vatican suspends ‘bishop of bling’ Tebartz-van Elst

by Jonathan MS Pearce Oct 26, 2013

Reading Time: 2 minutes The Vatican has suspended a senior German Church leader dubbed the “bishop of bling” by the media over his alleged lavish spending.

Bishop of Limburg Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst is accused of spending more than 31m euros (£26m; $42m) on renovating his official residence.

Uncategorized

The Vatican says evolution is okay

by cat Sep 19, 2008

Reading Time: 2 minutes The Roman Catholic Church has long affirmed the validity of evolutionary science. Unlike some (certainly not all) other Christians at the time, it never condemned Darwin or his ideas; and in 1950 Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans – a stance reaffirmed by Pope John Paul […]

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