In the long run, however, that temporal power was not stronger than the example of Stalin's Georgian mother—Svetlana's paternal grandmother. Read more

Police and plainclothes security officers closely monitored Therese Tran Thi Ly Hoa's funeral service, which was held at a local church.

A group of masked men then followed the funeral procession to a cemetery on the outskirts of the city.

"We tried to hold our dead relative's funeral well and did not cause any problems, but officials harassed us and showed a lack of respect for the dead," Cao Ha Truc, one of Hoa's relatives said.

Hoa spent much of her career fighting what she maintained was corruption by local government officials.

Prayers for her were held on a five-hectare plot of land from which some 100 households, many of them Catholic, were evicted in January.

Hoa's relatives erected a temporary tent to provide shelter for mourners. They said they needed the tents, umbrellas and chairs for those people who would gather to pray for her soul for the 7-10 days following the funeral.

However, Truc said police and local government officials surrounded the site before removing chairs and other items. He added that loudspeakers were used to accuse people of acting illegally.

People evicted from the property in January said it was acquired by the Parish Foreign Missions Society in 1954, when the area was part of the State of Vietnam.

The government claims the houses on the land were built illegally and schools and public facilities will be built there instead.

After the evictions, Australian Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam, denounced the government's land seizure of the land.

"This area, attached to the Catholic Parish of Loc Hung, has been the home and work centre of many families," he said.

"Generations of people migrated from the communist North at the partitioning of Vietnam in 1954. They are mostly low-income families, students, former prisoners of conscience and amputee-veterans of the South Vietnamese Army."

He also said "the authorities often resort to the use of force to seize properties and land in places which have potential commercial value.

"This has been a pattern of behaviour on the part of the communist government in Vietnam ironically since the so-called "doi moi" (reform) era, as demonstrated in many incidents throughout the country."

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• UCANews
• Image: UCA News

Most believed the Bolsheviks would themselves be overthrown quickly.

Scarcely anyone recognized that the event marked the beginning of one of the world's most diabolical regimes, one which lasted until the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

The implications of what came to be known as the October Revolution weren't really grasped at the time.

That's partly because, as the historian Richard Pipes wrote in his epic The Russian Revolution (1990), "the West considered Russia to lie on the periphery of the civilized world," one which was "in the midst of a World War of unprecedented destructiveness."

Yet it didn't take long for Russia's new Communist masters to show just how far they would go to maintain and extend their rule as they sought to realise the Marxist dream.

A cult of amorality

The toppling of Russia's Provisional Government by Lenin and the Bolsheviks turned out to be an exercise in pushing down a house of cards.

Contrary to later Communist myths, the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg was never stormed. After token resistance, it was overrun by mobs of looters.

Moscow was a different matter. Fierce house-to-house fighting lasted until November 2.

In his account of the Bolshevik coup, Pipes points out that most of the population paid little attention to what was happening.

This owed something to Lenin and his colleague, Leon Trotsky, successfully portraying the Bolshevik coup as a takeover by the Soviets of workers and soldiers: organisations which had functioned as a type of parallel government in the months leading up to the coup.

That was hardly the first lie propagated by the Bolsheviks. From the beginning, Communism has held, and Marxists have believed, that the ends always justify the means.

By this, they mean they don't recognize any moral constraints whatsoever when it comes to seizing and using power to realise their goals. Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report article by Dr. Samuel Gregg, Research Director at the Acton Institute.
• Image: ArtRussia

This should see priests leading services in Pyongyang on major holy days from next year.

The move followed a visit to the North Korean capital by South Korean bishops last week.

The visit was at the invitation of Pyongyang's state-run Korean Catholic Association (KCA), which has no link with the Vatican.

There is no resident Catholic priest anywhere in North Korea.

The first visit by priests from South Korea is scheduled for Easter, 2016.

Continue reading

The Pontiff told the crowd that "service is never ideological".

Speaking in a plaza dominated by a towering portrait of revolutionary Che Guevara, the Pope told the crowd they should "serve people, not ideas".

He added that the faithful "are called by virtue of our Christian vocation to that service which truly serves, and to help one another and not to be tempted by a 'service' which is really 'self-serving'".

Francis added: "There is a way to go about serving which is interested in only helping 'my people', in the name of 'our people'," he said.

"This service always leaves 'your people' outside, and gives rise to a dynamic of exclusion."

His words appear to take aim at President Raul Castro and the communist regime which many Cubans still complain have control over almost every aspect of life.

Anyone who steps out of line or is perceived as being disloyal in Cuba is at risk of losing their benefits.

But even as the Pope spoke, reports emerged that dozens of activists were being arrested.

Hundreds of thousands of people had turned out to watch the Pontiff's service this morning, including the current President Castro and the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

Later that day, the Pope met with Fidel Castro and his wife and family.

The Pontiff presented the former president, 89,

The Pontiff presented the former president, 89, with copies of "Laudato Si'" and "Evangelii Gaudium" as well as a book on happiness and the spiritual life by Italian priest Fr Alexandro Pronzato.

Castro, the nation's former dictator, gave Francis a collection of his own conversations about religion with Brazilian cleric Frei Betto.

Vatican spokesman Fr Frederico Lombardi, SJ, said the half hour meeting had been a "very informal conversation".

Sources

• Daily Mail
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Telesurtv

Dr. Kengor is widely recognized for his scholarly work about the American presidency, the Cold War, and the history of communism.

His most recent book is Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage (WND Books, 2015), a deeply researched historical study of how radical leftists, for close to two centuries, have worked to undermine and fundamentally change—or even destroy—marriage, family life, and traditional social structures and relationships.

Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, recently corresponded with Dr. Kengor about Takedown.

CWR: Toward the end of your book, in writing about the socialist support in Cuba of "gay marriage," you note, "As long as the traditional family is reversed, Marxism is advanced."

That's a fairly succinct summary of your book, isn't it? Why was Karl Marx so opposed to the traditional family and marriage? What shaped and informed his ideological disdain for both?

Dr. Paul Kengor: There are a lot of factors that go into answering that question, but two stand out: First, Karl Marx showed personal disdain for the institution of marriage. He was unfaithful to his wife and, all around, a poor husband.

I don't mean that to sound judgmental or uncharitable. Sure, those of us who are husbands are all lacking, myself included, but Marx was a bad case.

You can read the details in the book, but, among other things, Marx had a sexual relationship with the longtime family nursemaid, who he apparently impregnated, though he always insisted the child was neither his nor his responsibility.

We also can't neglect Marx's partner in The Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels, who joined him in writing of the "abolition of the family" and held married life in even lower contempt. Marx showed his opposition to monogamous marriage by breaking his vow to his wife, but Engels showed his disregard by simply refusing to marry the many mistresses that wanted him to make honest women out of them. Marx and Engels sniffed that "bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common." Continue reading

Source and Image

• Catholic World Report

Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, the archbishop of Ranchi, received a threatening letter purportedly from the People's Liberation Front of India (PLFI)

The PLFI is a breakaway faction of the Communist Party of India.

The letter demanded a payment of 50 million rupees, or about US$780,000.

It claimed the Church has financially prospered through evangelism.

The cardinal said he did not feel threatened by the letter.

"Even if the threat is real, we won't pay primarily because we don't have money," he said.

Police have beefed up the cardinal's security detail.

Continue reading

Mr Castro and his brother Fidel suppressed the church in communist Cuba for more than half a century.

President Raul Castro had a private meeting with the Pope in Rome on Monday.

He thanked the Pope for his mediation role in the recent thawing of relations between Cuba and the United States.

Afterwards, Mr Castro revealed that he admires the Pope as a champion of the poor, and that he reads all of his speeches.

He said: "If the Pope continues to talk as he does, sooner or later I will start praying again and return to the Catholic Church - I am not kidding."

"When the Pope goes to Cuba in September, I promise to go to all his Masses, and with satisfaction," he said.

Continue reading

The Pope called on participants at the World Meeting of Popular Movements last week in Rome to attack the structural causes of poverty and to defend workers' rights.

In a six-page speech, Pope Francis lamented that "land, housing and work are increasingly unavailable to the majority" of the world's population.

"It is strange, but if I talk like this, there are those who say that the Pope is a communist," he added.

"They don't understand that love for the poor is at the centre of the Gospel," he said.

"Demanding this isn't unusual, it's the social doctrine of the Church."

The address comes after right-wing US commentators had said the Pope is a Marxist because he criticised capitalist excess and demanded that governments should redistribute social benefits to the needy.

The Pope's speech also further highlighted his concerns for the environment, as well as the rights of farmers to have land, and for young people to be employed.

He said these issues would be dealt with in his upcoming encyclical on ecology and the environment.

The Pope said Christians must fight against social injustice, adding that Church doctrine commands Catholics to fight "for the dignity of the rural family, for water, for life and for all to benefit from the fruits of the earth".

He said it was right "to combat the structural causes of poverty, inequality, unemployment and [loss of] land, housing, social and labour rights".

The struggle for just causes "does us all good", Francis said.

"Let's say together with our heart: no family without a roof, no peasant farmer without land, no worker without rights, no person without dignified labour!"

Christians must also confront the destructive effects of what the Pope called the "Empire of Money" - forcible displacements and migrations, human and drug trafficking, war, and violence.

Sources

• The Tablet
• The Independent
• Image: Koin

The church will be built in country's second city, Santiago de Cuba.

Catholics in the city have been attending Mass in the street since Hurricane Sandy destroyed their previous ramshackle church.

Part of the new church will be built from the steel beams of the stage on which Pope Benedict XVI said Mass when he visited Havana in 2012.

The project will be funded in part by St Lawrence Parish in Tampa, Florida, most of whose members are Cuban exiles or descendants of exiles.

One final permit is required out of five before construction can begin.

The Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, Dionisio Garcia Ibanez, told the BBC: "I think it's not only about improving attitudes to the Catholic Church, but to Churches in general.

"I think there's a better understanding of religious affairs, so we hope it won't only be this church that we build. We hope there'll be more."

He also cited growing ties between Cuba and socialist yet devout nations like Venezuela for the improved state outlook towards the Church.

In the early years after Fidel Castro became president, many church properties were confiscated by the Cuban government.

Since then, Catholics and other Christians have developed networks of "house churches" where there are not proper church buildings available.

Believers would baptise their children in secret or attend Mass surreptitiously in distant neighbourhoods

Up to now, the Catholic Church in Cuba was only permitted to renovate existing properties or rebuild where old ones collapsed.

Once officially atheist, Cuba is now a secular state.

Now even Communist Party members now practice their religion openly.

Sixty per cent of Cuba's population is Catholic, but only a fraction practises the faith.

Sources

• The Tablet
• BBC
• Image: Christian Science Monitor

In a blog titled "Francis, capitalism and war: The pope's divisions", the British weekly accused the Pope of following Lenin in adopting an "ultra radical line" on capitalism.

This followed the wide-ranging interview the Pope gave to Spanish daily La Vanguardia.

"By positing a link between capitalism and war, he seems to be taking an ultra-radical line: one that consciously or unconsciously follows Vladimir Lenin in his diagnosis of capitalism and imperialism as the main reason why world war broke out a century ago," The Economist said.

"He observes what he calls the 'idolatry of money' in some places and hungry children in others. . . he concludes that economists must be missing some important point," the magazine continued.

But the blog conceded that even though Francis may not be getting the economic diagnosis or answers to problems exactly right, he is asking the right questions.

Continue reading

The pontiff also denied reports that he would name a woman cardinal. He also said there was good progress in cleaning up Vatican finances and confirmed that he would visit Israel and the Palestinian territories next year.

In a report by La Stampa, the pope was quoted as saying "Marxist ideology is wrong. But in my life I have known many Marxists who are good people, so I don't feel offended."

Last month, American radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who has a huge following in the United States, railed against the pope for written comments made on the world economy.

Limbaugh, who is not Catholic, said that parts of the document were "pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope" and suggested that someone else had written the papal document for him. He also accused the pope of going "beyond Catholicism" and being "purely political".

Pope Francis said he was not speaking "as a technician but according to the social doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, and this does not mean being Marxist." He said he was just trying to present a "snapshot of what is happening" in the world today.

Sources

Reuters
Huffington Post
Time Magazine
Image: Reuters

"The body of Christ which is the Church, like the human body, was first young, but at the end of the world it will have an appearance of decline." — St. Augustine

As I sat with Brother Marcel Zhang, OCSO (b. 1924), in his Beijing apartment, I thumbed through his private photographs of Yangjiaping Trappist Abbey. Some were taken before its destruction in 1947, and some he had taken during a recent visit to the ruins. What was once a majestic abbey church filled with divine prayer and worship had been reduced to debris and an occasional partial outline of a gothic window. When the People's Liberation Army (PLA) attacked the monastery in 1947 and began its cruel torments against the monks, Zhang was one of the monks. He shared with me some of his recollections, no doubt at great risk. As we looked at a picture of the Abbey church as it appears today, where the monks gathered for daily Mass prior to 1947, Zhang paused to contemplate the ruins. "It's already gone . . . already, the church is like this," he said, insinuating that the ruins of the Abbey "church" metaphorically represented the "Church" in China, still haunted by the past, still tormented in the present.1

After the People's Court had demanded the collective execution of the monks of Our Lady of Consolation Abbey at Yangjiaping, the Trappists were bound in heavy chains or thin wire, which cut deeply into their wrists, and were confined to await their punishments. Brother Zhang recalled that during the many trials, Party officials presiding over the interrogations accused the Trappists of being, "wealthy landlords, rich peasants who exploit poor peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad eggs, and rightists". Essentially, they were charged with all of the "crimes" commonly ascribed to the worst classes in the Communist list of "bad elements."2 Normally, only one of these accusations was sufficient to warrant an immediate public execution, but some of the accused from the abbey were foreigners, and news that Nationalist forces were on their way to save the monks alarmed the Communist officers. Punishments had to be inflicted on the road, on what became the Via Crucis of the Trappist sons of Saint Benedict. More interrogations were staged during stops, and Brother Zhang noted that new trials, or "struggle sessions" (鬥爭) as he called them, were orchestrated at every village. Zhang himself was questioned more than twenty times at impromptu People's Courts. He remembered that he was treated with much more leniency than the priests, as he was still only a young seminarian in 1947. The priests were much more despised. "After the interrogations," Zhang recalled, "we would go out to relieve ourselves, and I saw the buttocks of the priests, which were red [from their beatings]; the flesh hung off like meat."3 Chinese Catholics who know about the Yangjiaping incident refer to these torments as a "siwang xingjun," 死亡行軍 or a "death march," and this is when most of the Trappists who died received their "palms of martyrdom." Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: Historvius

Noting that John Paul II asked a similar request of Fidel Castro about Christmas and it was restored as a national holiday, Vatican Spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ said, "Of course, this is a matter for the Cuban authorities, and we hope for a response in the not too distant future."

Lombardi said Pope Benedict raised the matter of Cuban dissidents, especially those in prison, but did not have details on the specifics.

Just three days after saying that communism no longer works in Cuba, the 84-year-old German pope delivered a carefully worded homily at Mass that was less direct in criticising Cuba's one-party system but included some thinly-veiled phrases addressing its human rights record.

"I appeal to you to reinvigorate your faith, that you live in Christ and for Christ, and armed with peace, forgiveness and understanding, that you may strive to build a renewed and open society, a better society, one more worthy of humanity, and which better reflects the goodness of God," he said.

In an incident just as Benedict entered Santiago's main square to celebrate Mass, a man shouted "down with the revolution" and was led away by security agents.

And a few hours earlier, before they were due to attend the Pope's Mass, Alejandrina Garcia de la Rivas and Laura Maria Labrada Pollan representatives of the relatives of former political prisoners "Ladies in White," were arrested by Cuban police.

The previous evening, de la Rivas and Pollan had given an interview to the Catholic News Service.

Sources:

• CNA
• CNS
• The Telegraph
• Image: Fox News