Friday 19th of April 2024
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roman holiday .....

roman holiday .....

After fights over rising costs and falling pilgrim estimates, government and church both need World Youth Day to be a hit, writes Linda Morris. 

In the autumn of 2003, a high-ranking Vatican official visited Sydney for a week. He was Cardinal James Stafford, a member of John Paul II's inner circle and a mate of the Sydney Archbishop, Cardinal George Pell.

It was primarily an informal visit but he met the then premier, Bob Carr, and business leaders, and toured Sydney's Olympic Park and other prime venues. 

It was the first indication of the serious backing being given to the Sydney Catholic Church's bid for World Youth Day, a jubilee of Catholic youth celebration held outside of Rome every three years or so. Never before had the event come to Oceania or to a country with as small a Catholic population as Australia. 

Stealing it from Europe required a sea-change in thinking in Rome. Previously, Sydney had been considered too remote an outpost of the Catholic empire. 

Almost There: The Long Road To Success

rubber chastity...

Activists win right to promote condoms to Catholics at World Youth Day
  • Barbara McMahon in Sydney
  • Young Catholics attending World Youth Day celebrations in Sydney may find themselves swamped with offers of free condoms after legislation giving police the power to arrest anyone who "annoys" pilgrims was overturned by a court.

Activists opposed to the church's stance on contraception and abortion successfully appealed the laws, passed by the New South Wales government.

Members of the NoToPope coalition argued in a federal court challenge on Tuesday that the anti-annoyance regulations, which carry fines of $5,500, were invalid and contrary to civil liberties.

Three judges agreed, saying the measures designed to help police keep order during the six-day festivities "should not be interpreted as conferring powers that are repugnant to fundamental rights and freedoms".

University students Rachel Evans and Amber Pike, who challenged the legislation, said they and other protesters would now hand out condoms, stickers and leaflets to pilgrims. "Symbolic coat-hangers", designed to draw attention to the problem of backyard abortions, would also be distributed.

Henry the Facsimile...

Because the Vatican has just announced that it will market 200 facsimile copies of the elaborately decorated parchment from 1530, which bore an appeal by English peers to Pope Clement VII asking for the annulment of the marriage of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon.

The document is key, historians said, to understanding the formation of the English national character. It marks, said Professor David Starkey in Rome yesterday, the most important event in English history. "This is the moment at which England ceases to be a normal European Catholic country and goes off on this strange path," he said, "that leads it to the Atlantic, to the New World, to Protestantism, to Euro-scepticism."

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Gus: sometimes I feel I have the gift of divining... In the cartoon above, I gave a value of sumpthin' to Henry the VIIIth stamp which the Vatican could make money with. Sure not a lot but the concept is there. Now we are treated to, I suspect, a "way to make a bit' o' money" out of document that marked the end of the Papacy in pommyland — although our "Aussie" Tony has switched handbags like a windvane in search of a puff — just in case god was on the side of war porkyists, including war-crime Bushit... Aaaah, the cost of blind friendship with a liar of a US president! And lying about it knowingly...