Pope Francis: Is Gaza the scene of genocide?
THE Pope has called for an investigation into whether a genocide has taken place in Gaza according to “the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies”. The suggestion appears in a new book published in preparation for the Jubilee Year, 2025: Hope Never Disappoints: Pilgrims towards a better world (Edizioni Piemme, 2024). This includes interviews with the Pope by the journalist Hernán Reyes Alcaide. Last month, the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, said that the use of the terms “annihilation, extermination, and genocide” to describe Israel’s actions “undermines their seriousness” (News, 1 November).
New York priest disciplined over music video
A ROMAN Catholic priest in New York, Mgr Jamie Gigantiello, has been relieved of “any pastoral oversight or governance role” at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, after allowing the pop star Sabrina Carpenter to film a music video for her song “Feather” in the church, the diocese of Brooklyn confirmed this week. An investigation begun last year found evidence of “serious violations of diocesan policies and protocols”, including the use of a credit card for personal expenses and transfer of church funds to bank accounts affiliated with a former staff member of the New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Bishop Robert Brennan said in the statement, published by the BBC’s media partner CBS News. Mgr Gigantiello has described the decision to allow filming as a “lapse in judgement”.
Italian ‘King of the Con’ masquerades as friar
AN ITALIAN known as the “King of the Con”, Stefano Ramunni, 61, has been arrested, dressed as a Franciscan, after attempting to obtain fraudulently a loan at a branch of the postal service near the Vatican by presenting a driver’s licence stolen from a prelate who is currently serving as a papal ambassador in the Central African Republic, Crux reported last Friday. The magazine reports that Ramunni’s career as a “grifter” has been so prolific that he has apparently attempted to fake his own death on more than one occasion, “in hopes that doing so would extinguish multiple arrest warrants issued in his name”.
Tony Campolo, Christian sociologist, dies, aged 89
PROFESSOR Tony Campolo, a Baptist minister and sociologist in the United States, who co-founded the Red-Letter Christian movement emphasising the teachings of Jesus, has died, aged 89. A critic of the intertwining of Evangelicalism with right-wing politics, he was a champion of such causes as civil rights and efforts to tackle poverty. He wrote 35 books, including A Reasonable Faith: The case for Christianity in a secular world. In 2018, HarperCollins published Why I Left, Why I Stayed — a dialogue between Professor Campolo and his son, Bart, who abandoned the Christian faith and became a humanist chaplain (Features, 26 May 2017).