Castro to Convert During Pope's Visit?

From ABC:

Phoebe NATANSON notes a La Repubblica report in which Fidel Castro’s daughter Alina is quoted as saying “During this last period, Fidel has come closer to religion: he has rediscovered Jesus at the end of his life. It doesn’t surprise me because dad was raised by Jesuits.” The article quotes an unidentified high prelate in the Vatican who is working on the Pope’s Cuba trip: “Fidel is at the end of his strength. Nearly at the end of his life. His exhortations in the party paper Granma, are increasingly less frequent. We know that in this last period he has come closer to religion and God.”

• CASTRO TO CONVERT DURING POPE’S VISIT?

Priest Holes

From Christine at Laudem Gloriae:

Under the reign of "Good Queen Bess", a law was passed prohibiting the celebration of Mass, on pain of extradition. On a second offense, the guilty priest would be sentenced to a year in prison, and on the third offense, jailed for life. In some cases, the offending priest would be put to death, usually by hanging, drawing, and quartering. Another law was passed that punished with death any Catholic who should convert a Protestant.

It was during this time that the Jesuit priest and martyr Nicholas Owen was called on to design and build priest holes in all the great Catholic manses in England. He spent the greater part of his life doing so.

With incomparable skill, he knew how to conduct priests to a place of safety along subterranean passages, to hide them between walls and bury them in impenetrable recesses, and to entangle them in labyrinths and a thousand windings. But what was much more difficult of accomplishment, he so disguised the entrances to these as to make them most unlike what they really were. Moreover, he kept these places so close a secret with himself that he would never disclose to another the place of concealment of any Catholic. He alone was both their architect and their builder, working at them with inexhaustible industry and labour, for generally the thickest walls had to be broken into and large stones excavated, requiring stronger arms than were attached to a body so diminutive as to give him the nickname of 'Little John,' and by this his skill many priests were preserved from the prey of persecutors. Nor is it easy to find anyone who had not often been indebted for his life to Owen's hiding-places.

--Fr. Tanner, Vita et Mors

Fr. Owen was caught and tortured on the rack. Asked to reveal all the hiding places he had built, he refused, and died in the midst of his torments.

Some of the following were built by Fr. Owen, while others' origins are unknown.

Harvington Hall

A false fireplace leads into the attic...

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Pope Prods Jesuits on Loyalty to Church

Vatican, Jan. 18, 2008 (CWNews.com) - In a message to the 35th general convention of the Society of Jesus, Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) has called for a revival of traditional Jesuit loyalty to the Catholic faith and the Holy See.

"I heartily hope that the present congregation affirms with clarity the authentic charism of the Founder so as to encourage all Jesuits to promote true and healthy Catholic doctrine," the Holy Father wrote in a message to the 225 Jesuit delegates meeting in Rome. The Pope's letter was dated January 10, but made public on January 18, the day before the general congregation was scheduled to elect a new superior general.

Pope Benedict called the Society of Jesus to a "renewed ascetic and apostolic impulse." In more specific terms he suggested that:

… it could prove extremely useful that the general congregation reaffirm, in the spirit of St. Ignatius, its own total adhesion to Catholic doctrine, in particular on those neuralgic points which today are strongly attacked by secular culture, as for example the relationship between Christ and religions; some aspects of the theology of liberation; and various points of sexual morality, especially as regards the indissolubility of marriage and the pastoral care of homosexual persons.

The Pope also reminded the delegates of the special loyalty that Jesuits owe to the Holy See, confirmed "in a vow of immediate obedience to the successor of Peter." That loyalty is urgently needed today, he said, to help preach the Gospel message faithfully to a society "distracted by many discordant voices."

Pope Benedict offered his "most heartfelt gratitude" to the outgoing Jesuit superior, Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, for nearly 25 years of leadership. He also thanked all of the Jesuits who have worked faithfully for the Church. He promised his prayers for the success of the general congregation and the future of the Jesuit order.

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