Roman Catholic Cardinals offer prayers in conclave to choose new pope this week
Sri Lanka’s Cardinal Albert Malcolm Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo, arrives to lead Mass at the San Lorenzo In Lucino church in Rome today. Right picture shows the chimney being erected that will puff the white smoke when the new pope is elected
With the vast majority of Catholics now living outside Europe, there is growing pressure for a pontiff from another part of the world.
Church leaders seek guidance ahead of private vote next week
Roman Catholic Cardinals prayed today for spiritual guidance ahead of a closed-door conclave to choose a new pope to lead the church at one of the most difficult periods in its history.
Cardinals will hold a last pre-conclave meeting tomorrow to fine-tune a job description for the man they think would be best suited to lead a church hit by sexual abuse scandals around the world as well as allegations of corruption in the Vatican itself.
The 115 cardinals who will take part in the election as of Tuesday were subsequently celebrating Masses in Rome today, either in the quiet of private chapels or in the grandeur of Rome’s great cathedrals and basilicas.
“The conclave is just around the corner. Let us pray that the holy spirit gives the church a man who can lead her in the footsteps of the great pontiffs of the past 150 years,” said Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, at his Mass in Rome.
Scola (71), is considered the leading Italian candidate to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, who cast the 1.2. billion-member church into uncertainty last month when he became the first pontiff in six centuries to abdicate instead of ruling for life.
“We need to make the right decision,” Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer of Sao Paulo (63), who is considered Latin America’s leading candidate, said at his public Mass in a small, Baroque church packed with wellwishers and reporters.
Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley asked God to “enlighten the church” so the cardinals would choose a pope to confirm everyone in the faith.
Other cardinals such as Manila’s Luis Antonio Tagle (55), considered a long-shot because of his relatively young age, kept a lower profile, mostly staying inside the walls of seminaries or other religious institutions.
At the Vatican, St Peter’s Square was eerily quiet, without a pope for a second consecutive Sunday. The windows of the papal apartments overlooking the square remained closed.
Benedict, who is now “Pope Emeritus” and has no residual authority over the church, is at the papal summer retreat south of Rome while his permanent residence in a Vatican convent is being prepared.
“This is a time of overall crisis but also a time of crisis in faith,” Italian bishop Rino Fisichella told Italy’s Tgcom24 television, adding that he hoped a new pope would appear from the window next Sunday.
A Non-European pope?
The 115 cardinal electors under the age of 80 will enter the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday afternoon and hold one vote that evening. They will vote repeatedly thereafter until one of their number receives a two-thirds majority, or 77 votes.
If a pope is not elected in two or three days it means cardinals are probably severely divided and might have to turn to a dark horse candidate to find consensus.
No conclave has lasted than more than five days in the past century. Pope Benedict was elected within barely 24 hours in 2005 after four rounds of voting.
But this time, no clear favourites have emerged to take the helm of the troubled church.
“Prior to the last conclave, everyone recognised Ratzinger was the frontrunner on the day the conclave began. The same was true for Paul VI (in 1963) and Pius XII (in 1939),” said Father Tom Reese, Jesuit historian and author of Inside the Vatican.
Apart from Italy’s Scola and Brazil’s Scherer, others who have been mentioned the most are Canada’s Marc Ouellet. US cardinals such as O’Malley or Timothy Dolan of New York have also been cited as candidates.
With the vast majority of Catholics now living outside Europe, there is growing pressure for a pontiff from another part of the world.
Many observers believe a Latin American, Asian or African pope could bring attention to the poverty of the southern hemisphere in the same way the Polish-born John Paul put a spotlight on the East-West divide after he was elected in 1978.
The Sistine Chapel has been readied to receive the sequestered cardinals, who will use stoves to tell the outside world whether or not they have chosen a new leader – black smoke signifying no decision and white smoke announcing a new pontiff.
One stove, made of cast iron and used in every conclave since 1939, will be used to burn ballots. The second stove is an electronic one which will use electronically ignited flares to send out either white or black smoke.
Workmen have built rows of tables where the cardinals will sit under the gaze of Jesus in Michelangelo’s massive Last Judgment panel on the wall behind the altar.
Around 1,000 calls have been made to Magdalene laundries fund
Mr Justice Quirke met with the Magdalene Survivors Together group
Mr Justice John Quirke left pic, who is carrying out a review to devise recommendations on payments and support, has been meeting Magdalene Survivor representative groups this week.
He met the Magdalene Survivors Together group, and the UK-based Irish Womens Survivors Support Network, to discuss the fund.
Irish homeowners to calculate value on new property tax web site
WEBSITE WILL ALLOW HOMEOWNERS TO CALCULATE HOW MUCH THEY WILL HAVE TO PAY
Irish homeowners can now assess what their likely property tax will be using an online guide which went live this afternoon.
Revenue chairwoman Josephine Feehily. The guide, from the Revenue Commissioners, allows people to identify the area in which their home is located and find out what their annual tax is likely to be.
But they have warned that it only provides a guide to “average market values” in a given locality, based on the type of property, age and location.
This means that people with, for example, large gardens, a house extension or other features which add value to the property must make sure they are not under-paying the tax.
This is because does not provide a guide for individual properties – meaning that homeowners may be forced to seek an independent valuation to ensure they are paying the correct tax.
“The guidance is primarily based on the market value of properties sold since the year 2010 in the area, adjusted for average price movements in the interim,” the Revenue said.
“This guidance will be helpful in the majority of cases but there are always properties in an area that differ from the average.
“Self assessment requires property owners to honestly assess the market value of their own property. If a property is smaller or larger than the average for the area, is in a significantly poor state of repair or has exceptional or unique features, these will have to be factored into the assessment.”
The guide is available here by clicking the link at:
PROPERTY VALUATION GUIDE - REVENUE COMMISSIONERS
Declan Ganley among ‘Sunday B/ness Post’ bidders
Declan Ganley
Four parties have so far expressed interest in buying The Sunday Business Post, which went into examinership last Thursday, including Better Capital, a private equity firm led by John Moulton.
It has also emerged that Webprint Concepts Ltd’s lawyers – Mason, Hayes & Curran – plan next week to take legal action to have the firm reinstated as printers to Landmark, the new Crosbie-owned company that took over the Irish Examiner and other regional titles last week.
Other bidders for the Post include Key Capital, a financial adviser co-founded by Conor Killeen and entrepreneur Declan Ganley, who has teamed up with a Spanish media magnate.
The founder of television group Setanta, Michael O’Rourke, is also mulling a bid.
Meanwhile Donagh O’Doherty, managing director of Webprint, said the decision to halt the TCH titles’ printing with his company was “extraordinarily unfair and simply wrong. We intend to sue to vindicate our rights”.
The Crosbies will defend the actions.
Rising CO2 means rising temperature
“Ice cores and other data provide evidence that the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere, and Earth’s temperature, have fluctuated in a cyclical pattern through time. These cycles of cooling and warming are natural, and caused, over the last 750,000 years, primarily by cyclic changes in Earth’s orbit. During that time frame we have experienced alternating periods of warmth and periods of glaciations.
“However, at present, the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere far exceed even the highest levels of the past half-million years. Our global temperature is increasing in response to this added greenhouse gas.”
There are two charts below. The first one shows the rise and fall of CO2 and temperature over the last 400,000 years. As CO2 rises, it invariably drags temperature with it. As it falls, the Earth cools. And so it must be. Only humans can lie. Only humans can deceive. Only humans can imagine a false reality and pretend it is true. Physics cannot lie. The laws of nature must be obeyed. Our Earth must grow hotter under the command of the gases we emit.
In the second chart the black line shows us the observed REAL climate change. The blue line represents a computer model of NATURAL climate. The red line represents our NATURAL climate with greenhouse gases. Without greenhouse gases the temperature of our climate remains level. Only when greenhouse gases are added does the computer model match up with the observed REAL climate change.
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