At 88 years old, an old man with many comorbidities, now with bronchial and lung infections, Pope Francis is clearly in his dying days. We can’t assign the number of days, months or years, unless one favors euthanasia, clearly immoral, but everything is up for grabs in the synodal church.
At any rate, Catholics and people of good will should be praying for the pope and for God’s will be done on earth as in heaven.
But why can’t the Vatican simply tell it as it is. Pope Francis is dying. We don’t know when nor can we predict it, unless this pope changes Church teaching on active euthanasia.
Instead, they condemn those who are speculating that His Holiness is going to resign or that his death is near, as though everything will return to as it was in 2013.
Nothing will return to as it was even two weeks ago.
I know from personal experience in my pastoral ministry and with my own mother, who was 93 when she died, that things change from day to day. My mom was in a coma days prior to her death, only to wake up, be clear and immediately eat a full meal with dessert to boot. Can we say she improved? No! Two days before her death, she was very clear, joking with family members and having a good time. Two days later she was gone.
We are in an interregnum of some kind even if Pope Francis returns to Santa Marta, the Vatican Motel Six. Remember that Pope John Paul II returned to his Apostolic Palace at the Vatican in order to die and he did die on Divine Mercy Sunday.
God bless Pope Francis and long live the pope.
We come before You in prayer, lifting up Your servant, Pope Francis, in his time of need. You are the
Source of all healing, and we ask You to surround him with Your loving presence, granting him
strength and recovery. May Your divine grace rest upon him, restoring his health and filling him with
renewed vigor to continue leading Your Church with compassion and wisdom.
“But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds, declares the Lord.”
(Jeremiah 30:17)
We place Pope Francis into Your hands, trusting in Your eternal care. May he be comforted by the
love of the Church and the prayers of all the faithful. We ask, through the intercession of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, that his recovery be swift, and his spirit be strengthened in Your peace.
May Your will be done in his life, O Lord, and may Your healing power be with him always.
We offer this prayer in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You in the unity
of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
21 comments:
The Pope is likely close to death. He looks absolutely terrible in the pictures. Perhaps he should take a cue from Pius XII who had much to say about ordinary versus ordinary means to preserve one’s life. I find it strange that Vatican City cannot handle his final days. He should be in hospice at the Vatican
I meant to say ordinary versus extraordinary
I think that Pope Francis is entitled to privacy and may have directed the Vatican news department to keep things under wrap. That there are no photos of him is very peculiar nor an attempt to bring him to the window of the hospital so people can see him. That opens the Vatican to all the conspiracy theories about how bad things are and that he might already be dead, but those behind the scenes don't want to give up power. Who knows? But yes, if he is not to improve, even strong doses of antibiotics and steroids and diuretics don't need to be given and in fact simply post-pone the inevitable. God bless the pope and, more importantly, the Church during this interregnum period of time. Let's just pray that there isn't any skullduggery behind the scenes by his advisors all of whom have done the Church a disservice.
In Italy, the home of Machiavelli and thus Machiavellism, there is all kinds of speculation in the press about the pope's health, his desire to resign or that he is in a coma and on a ventilator. Cardinals are reacting to the Italy speculation and it would be very funny if not so sad.
But all of this is at least consistent with the pope's desire to make a mess, not just in life, but evidently in his dying and dead days!
Lol! Good one Father. I hope the College of Cardinals survey the state of the Church, objectively. The Church will always be with us, but if the Vatican continues to pursue a politucal path, She will continue to shed members. The USCCB shot itself in the foot this week!
Will the USCCB or the Vatican be commenting on this?
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/wisconsin-gov-tony-evers-has-eliminated-mother-replaced/
Agree, the situation is likely approaching gravely ill if it's not already there. Transition is difficult. Prayers for the Pope and the Church.
K lacks the courage or the intellectual honesty to call out the Wisconsin governor for wanting to change the term “mother” to “inseminated person.” The Dems are criminally insane!
I went to public schools, but my wife went to Catholic ones, primarily taught by Sisters of Charity. When a nun was very ill, they would pray for a rapid recovery or a happy death. That seems appropriate here.
TJM:
I am not trying to be confrontational with you, but I think you know my views about dishonesty and lying by now. I believe that when political leaders commit the sin of bearing false witness, it strikes at the very heart of our Republic, whether it is Biden, Trump, or whoever is doing it. Now I know you will dismiss the sources, but Trump lies incessantly, and on so many issues he creates a completely fabricated alternate reality. And when he is called out on his fakery, he engages in projection, accusing those who do call him out of propagating fake news. He has even apparently repeated, and continued to further exaggerate and embellish, the lie that the Biden Administration spent $50 million to send condoms to Gaza, even after Musk admitted--in Trump's presence in the Oval Office--his mistake in making this claim. For details on all this see:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/23/us/politics/trump-alternative-reality.html
https://au.news.yahoo.com/trump-lies-again-100m-condoms-052727255.html
And so, I am compelled to ask whether the Gateway Pundit or any of the sources you cite will be commenting on these incessant lies and whether YOU will have the intellectual honesty to call Trump out for telling them. Again, I am not seeking to pick a fight with you over this, but I really wish we could both agree to commit to demanding honesty and truth telling from our political leaders and to reject Trump’s (and anyone else’s) Orwellian world in which four fingers are five just because Trump (or whoever) says that they are. Trump’s pathological dishonesty is one of the main reasons, perhaps indeed THE main reason, I could never have voted for him. And while I would have greatly preferred to have voted for an independent candidate, as Father McDonald says he did, doing so offered no prospect of preventing Trump from regaining the presidency. In my view, some of Trump's policies and actions are worthy of support (like arresting and deporting very dangerous noncitizen criminals who unbelievably were still walking the streets) while others are dreadful. But worst of all is the constant lying, something that as a Catholic I cannot in good conscience support.
Mark J.
Mark J,
I do not mind your comments at all, but you and others have an obsession about Trump lying when it is the presidents on the Left, Obama and Biden, who lie all of the time, causing extreme damage, and you do not seem to care. I look at results, not what they say. For example, in Trump's first term, we had no new hot wars and working men and women made their best economic gains in decades. In stark contrast we had new hot wars under both Obama and Biden and working men and women (not the moocher class), lost ground economically.
Remember when Obama said we'd save $2500 a year under Obamacare? Don't make me laugh. Biden was, and is, an inveterate liar and plagiarist such that when the press was at least marginally even-handed, Biden was driven out of the presidential primary in 1988 for just those things. The press's collective amnesia on that point propelled Biden into the presidency in 2020 because he would be a "unifier." The greatest lie centers upon Biden, an alleged Catholic, betraying his Faith and becoming the most rabidly pro-abortion president in history, even sending Catholic grandmas to jail for protesting outside of abortionatoriums. This moral depravity makes Trump look like a saint by comparison.
Now we find the media (and its auxiliary, the Democratic Party) fighting to save waste and fraud in government, when they never said a word when Democrat presidents like Clinton or Obama suggested such things. The media is sobbing over government workers losing their "jobs" (I worked in government, so I know what that means), but did not interview, nor shed one tear, when Biden shut down the Pipeline Project by presidential fiat, throwing thousands of union workers out of work (Biden was willing to betray the Dem's former union base, to satisfy leftist weirdos jihad against fossil fuels).
I admit, The Gateway Pundit can be out there and bombastic and sensationalist, but they also expose supposedly objective news organizations like The New York Times, which notoriously lied about the Government not spying on Trump in 2016, but then changed its tune, when it was discovered, they had, then their story was he deserved to be spied upon. The Times participated in the Russian Collusion Hoax and insisted the Hunter Biden Laptop was disinformation along with the 51 Deep State liars. The Times lies all of the time, thus continuing the Walter Duranty tradition.
When we elect a president, we are not voting for a saint, we are voting for a person who will deliver the greatest good, for the greatest, number. It looks like Trump may be on the verge of ending the war in Ukraine which will sadden leftwingers and neo-cons alike!
Mark J,
If this checks out, DOGE is an absolute neccessity. You will not find any of this reported by the “usual suspects.” The unwashed masses are not entitled to know where their tax money goes.
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2025/02/24/stonewall-uks-largest-trans-rights-organization-turned-out-to-be-a-usaid-front-n3800132
TJM:
Thank you for your response. Just a couple of points in reply. First, the reason I have an “obsession” about Trump’s lies is that, although I oppose lying by any politician including Obama and Biden (see my previous post as well as some posts in other threads), I do not agree with you that they “lie[d] all the time,” just some of the time, whereas I honestly believe Trump does lie all the time (or very close to it) and am willing to bet that an empirical study would support that belief and the comparison.
Second, you do not seem to mind the lies provided the results are desirable. Apart from the objection to pursuing desirable ends by immoral means, what do you do when they lie about the results they claim to have achieved, as arguably Musk has been doing, although I concede that an alternative explanation for reporting false results is just sheer incompetence, which has certainly been on display in spades in DOGE’s work so far? Regarding the false reporting ($55 billion when the reality is more like $8 billion or even less), see, e.g.,
https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-and-doge-promised-up-to-2-trillion-in-government-savings-how-much-have-they-actually-saved-so-far-201718142.html
Regarding Musk and DOGE’s incompetence in carrying out their work and Republican voter reaction to it, see e.g.,
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/town-halls-republicans-feel-heat-trump-musks-firing-cutting-spree-rcna193164
Moreover, it seems that even some agencies run by Trump allies are pushing back against Musk’s demands (not to mention the courts):
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/federal-workers-agencies-push-back-elon-musks-email-ultimatum-rcna193439
As one judge put it on Friday, DOGE’s approach is “chaotic and haphazard.” Id. Genius, as Trump would have it? Hardly! More like a clown show.
We could have some interesting conversation on the consequentialist standard of voting for the candidate who “will deliver the greatest good for the greatest number,” particularly how we should understand “good,” but we can save that for another day. -:)
Mark J.
The following may shed some further light on the matter, although we would need to find out who contributes to the Global Equality Fund coordinated by the State Department (I suspect USAID contributes at least part of it):
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36we3pnxy6o
Mark J.
Mark J,
I believe not only did Obama and Biden lie all of the time, but they had evil, anti-American motives. You accidentally touched on it when you complimented President Trump on rounding up criminally dangerous illegal aliens for deportation. You should ask yourself why did Obama and Biden not take that approach? Their duty is to protect American citizens and its resources. Instead they welcomed them with open arms, put them on the public dole, and when they committed crimes, released them. That is PURE EVIL. Even now Dem politicians have not learned their lesson from November and some braindead governors, who obviously failed Constitutional Law 101, have decided to ignore the Supremacy Clause and not cooperate with the feds on deportations. They sound like insurrectionists, so let's agree to give them the January 6 treatment and throw them into the slammer for 4 years without due process of law.
Elon Musk is probably one of the most brilliant and successful men in the world who great up in the very corrupt country of South Africa, so he knows something about corrupt governments. He is just getting started and non-fake news sources are reporting the findings.
NBC is not a credible source, and I don't bother reading their pro Left/Dem tripe. They lie ALL of the time AND are circling the drain. For laughs a couple of weeks ago I watched Lester Holt report on the Pete Hegseth hearings. Of course, Holt reported all of the Dem talking points and did not mention any of the Republican ones. Fair and balanced? He also used very unflattering pictures of Pete. I guess NBC is upset that Pete is ferreting out perverts, DEI, and transgender nonsense that has nothing to do with preparing us for war. NBC and the Dems prefer our soldiers loathe White people, wear lipstick and skirts, and use the proper pronouns. By the way, Holt was let go, so I believe even NBC may be attempting in some small way to become a news organization again, rather than the PR of the far Left.
I highly recommend you broaden your horizons and look to alternate news sources some of whom are well written blogs by law professors and journalists who have left the MSM propaganda shops. They actually report the news the Nutworks refuse to report because it is contra the agenda.
Mark J,
I saw that article this morning. My question for you is why we would provide $1 to that kind of an organization. How does this advance American interests? By the way, I am very frightened for my family members in England. That country has really run off the rails, locking up a fellow who burned the Koran and then let the Muslim who stabbed him out on bond? Winston would not be happy!
Mark J,
The alleged opposition to DOGE is an orchestrated effort by the political left. I have Dem friends who are thrilled with what Trump and Musk are doing, but we are in the Midwest where people are not in love with wasteful big government. The MSM propaganda outfits will NEVER report on this scam.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/02/25/report-medias-proof-doge-backlash-town-halls-organized-leftists/
TJM:
I agree that Musk knows about corrupt governments, and he is currently giving us all a signal lesson in how they work. Where is the discussion in your sources about Musk’s many conflicts of interest—which are surely also corrupt? The following is from Isaac Saul in the very unbiased newsletter Tangle:
“Perhaps most notably, nothing I've said so far even touches on the most likely reason we are all suffering through this incompetence and chaos: Musk profits in obvious ways from this entire arrangement. Almost every company he is involved with stands to benefit from his current position as pseudo-vice president and ‘spend cutter’ extraordinaire, and several of his companies are already reaping the rewards.
Musk ‘deletes’ the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or defangs the National Labor Relations Board, which happen to have a dozen open investigations into his companies. Musk fires FAA employees and promises to rebuild it with... private sector workers from his company, SpaceX. Musk cuts hundreds of government contracts in his first month at DOGE, but doesn't touch any of the 100 contracts with 17 federal agencies worth $13 billion that are associated with his companies. It’s happening in less obvious ways, too, like Musk reportedly pressuring advertisers to come back to X or face repercussions from the federal government. Can we really be this blind?
Of course, plenty of people have grasped this reality. Kudos to reporter Jonathan Swan, who asked Trump a direct question about these conflicts of interest — and Trump's promise to make sure they weren’t an issue. Here is Trump's response, verbatim, which I transcribed:
‘Well, I mean, I'm just hearing about it, and if there is — he told me before I told him — but, obviously, I will not let there be any conflict of interest. He's done an amazing job. [Trump glances at his notes.] They've revealed, in fact, that he's going to be on tonight — a big show called Sean Hannity, at 9 o'clock — and, uh, he's on and I'm on. And we talk about a lot of different things. And any conflicts, I told Elon, 'any conflicts you can't have anything to do with that.' So anything to do with possibly even space, we won't let Elon partake in that.’
This, quite obviously, is not a reassuring answer. It isn't just a jumbled non-defense, it ignores the reality that the conflicts of interest are very real and already happening.”
Instead of the incompetent chaos and the apparent corruption, why didn’t Musk (and his juvenile employees) learn about all the different departments and agencies first, rationally analyze potential cuts, and then submit a report to Congress so that our elected leaders in the legislature could decide on what cuts to make in the spending they had already authorized? Sure, it would take a bit longer, but it is a far more rational and wise approach than the nonsensical, corrupt, and arguably unconstitutional process DOGE is currently adopting. And isn’t it rather rich when the richest man in the world complains about unelected bureaucrats and says this while being—wait for it—the unelected bureaucrat par excellence? In sum, I don’t trust Elon Musk at all.
Mark J.
TJM:
You won’t get any argument from me about how England has gone off the rails. I cannot speak to the individual case you mention because I haven’t researched it, but what I do know makes me very sad. I can only hope that the country can find its way back to sanity after years of misrule by the likes of that mendacious buffoon Boris Johnson. From what I have seen and read I believe Sir Keir Starmer is a decent person. Elon Musk was horribly unfair and dishonest in his criticism of him over the grooming scandal, as you will discover when you check out Starmer’s record as Director of Public Prosecutions. Shame on Musk (again)! I hope Starmer's visit to the States this week goes well.
Mark J.
Mark J,
I know you have a moral compass, but the Democratic Party in the US does not. They are pushing perversion, exalting illegal aliens over US citizens, and have no idea how to run an economy, although they are great at enriching their politicians (I toss slimeball McConnell into that camp). Although not perfect, I don't recall Republicans pushing any of those things.
Elon Musk is a brilliant man and knows how to sniff out fraud and waste. The MSM which is a beneficiary of that world will never report on what they are finding with any objectivity is they mention it at all beyond their hysterics. I worked in government for a few years and know first hand how inefficient and wasteful it can be. There is literally no accountability. My understanding is Musk has moved from identifying issues and is now in the forensic stage. That will be very telling.
What irks me is that CONgress (and I mean that) has abdicated their oversight duty and allowed bureaucrats to run the show. I find their squealing hilarious. I never held a job in my life where I could not be sacked on a moment's notice even as a partner in an international law firm. Where were the media tears and follow up interviews with displaced workers when Biden callously threw 14,000 UNION workers out of work when he shut down the Pipeline project. JoAnn Fabrics (I only go there under duress from my wife) has 19,000 employees will be soon out of work. No sympathy for them. Ike Eisenhower warned us about the Military-Industrial Complex. If he were around today, he would throw in the MSM which I believe is the greatest threat to democracy. Jeff Bezos just lowered the boom on the employees of the Washington Post and they are in pain. Proves he is over the target!
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