Probably three weeks ago President Trump and his team were seen praying around the presidential desk.
Below are words spoken by Pope Leo on Palm Sunday.
“Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.
“He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
Maureen Dowd’s column in The Irish Times yesterday, which is taken from The New York Times.
A great piece of writing; compelling reading.
Donald Trump used to brag about grabbing women by the crotch. Now he’s grabbing the world by its axis.
He still believes he has the right to swoop in with a transgressive attack. He has simply expanded his targets.
“When you’re a star,” he once said, “they let you do it. You can do anything.”
His approach in his second term can best be described as manhandling, abetted by his cabinet of lackeys and congressional Republican bootlickers.
Mike Johnson pathetically conjured an “America First Award” for Trump out of thin air.
The House speaker called the “beautiful golden statue” of an eagle appropriate to “the new golden era in America”.
Trump thinks more than ever that he can have his way with whatever he wants in whatever way he wants. Whether it’s a country, a skyline, the White House.
He accosted the People’s House, bulldozing the East Wing and a Jackie Kennedy garden, before anyone could even look at the plans.
He blows up suspected drug boats, snatched Nicolás Maduro out of his bedroom and salivates at the thought of pillaging Greenland and assailing Cuba.
“I do believe I’ll be having the honour of taking Cuba,” he said. “That’s a big honour. Taking Cuba in some form. Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth.”
You can do anything.
At a cabinet meeting on Thursday, an amused Trump mused: “I think I may go to Venezuela and run for president against Delcy,” referring to Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president who ascended with Trump’s approval.
On Monday, Trump said that if Iran did not submit to him, “we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out”.
He was steaming that Nato was not bending to his will and he was vowing that it would rue the day.
“This was a test for Nato,” he said during the cabinet meeting, adding: “If you don’t do that, we’re going to remember. Just remember. Remember this in a number of months from now. Remember my statements.
“They have an expression, a great expression, ‘Never forget’. We can never forget.”
It’s odd that Trump co-opted the bracing slogan about 9/11 given that on that day he observed that, with the Twin Towers coming down, one of his buildings, 40 Wall Street, became the tallest in lower Manhattan.
Once, Trump thought war was a waste of time and lives and money; he dreamed of building hotels on the beaches of North Korea and the Gaza Strip.
After he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, he gave a speech outlining his military policy.
“We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with,” he said. Now he lusts for regime change.
Cadet Bone Spurs has developed a taste for flaunting our unparalleled military and there’s no one at the Pentagon to curb this new appetite for global violence – certainly not the aggro Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth showed again why he is such an unnerving choice to run the US military when he blocked the promotion of two black officers and two women to be one-star army generals.
As The New York Times scooped, that left a gaggle largely of white men, Hegseth’s favourite breed, on the promotion list.
When Trump was a celebrity developer, people laughed at his megalomania in plastering his name everywhere. He grabbed buildings by the crotch. But now that he is president, it’s not funny. It’s foul.
He forced his name on to the Kennedy Center. He scratched the “US” out of the US Institute of Peace and made it the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace. He is branding his name on a class of battleships. A multi-storey banner of his glaring face hangs from the Department of Justice.
He tried to have Washington Dulles Airport and New York’s Penn Station renamed after him, and is plotting a Trump-style arch across from the Lincoln Memorial so tall it could interfere with Reagan National Airport flight paths.
Trump’s handpicked arts commission approved the creation of a commemorative 24-karat gold coin with a scowling picture of the president leaning over a desk with his fists clenched. And King Midas is impelling the Treasury Department to mint a one-dollar gold coin with his visage. Now, in his frenzied quest for ubiquity, he will deface US currency.
The Treasury Department announced on Thursday that Trump would become the first sitting president to have his signature on paper money.Thrusting himself onto legal tender is anything but tender – he’s shoving the US treasurer’s signature off the bills.
Naturally, Trump put a sycophantic man in that job – ending a 76-year stretch of women holding it.
“The president’s mark on history as the architect of America’s golden age economic revival is undeniable,” said Brandon Beach, the treasurer, in a statement.
“Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate but well deserved.” (It’s alarming that the US treasurer does not seem to know that the “operation” in Iran is raising prices and cratering stocks.)
As everyone tries to make sense of this more belligerent Trump, just remember: He’s still “Access Hollywood” Trump. He continues his amoral, pseudo-macho posturing – just with a bigger stage and the biggest weapons.
You can do anything. – The New York Times
Below is Maureen Dowd’s column in The Irish Times, which is taken from The New York Times.
Great writing.
Donald Trump used to brag about grabbing women by the crotch. Now he’s grabbing the world by its axis.
He still believes he has the right to swoop in with a transgressive attack. He has simply expanded his targets.
“When you’re a star,” he once said, “they let you do it. You can do anything.”
His approach in his second term can best be described as manhandling, abetted by his cabinet of lackeys and congressional Republican bootlickers.
Mike Johnson pathetically conjured an “America First Award” for Trump out of thin air.
The House speaker called the “beautiful golden statue” of an eagle appropriate to “the new golden era in America”.
Trump thinks more than ever that he can have his way with whatever he wants in whatever way he wants. Whether it’s a country, a skyline, the White House.
He accosted the People’s House, bulldozing the East Wing and a Jackie Kennedy garden, before anyone could even look at the plans.
He blows up suspected drug boats, snatched Nicolás Maduro out of his bedroom and salivates at the thought of pillaging Greenland and assailing Cuba.
“I do believe I’ll be having the honour of taking Cuba,” he said. “That’s a big honour. Taking Cuba in some form. Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth.”
You can do anything.
At a cabinet meeting on Thursday, an amused Trump mused: “I think I may go to Venezuela and run for president against Delcy,” referring to Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president who ascended with Trump’s approval.
On Monday, Trump said that if Iran did not submit to him, “we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out”.
He was steaming that Nato was not bending to his will and he was vowing that it would rue the day.
“This was a test for Nato,” he said during the cabinet meeting, adding: “If you don’t do that, we’re going to remember. Just remember. Remember this in a number of months from now. Remember my statements.
“They have an expression, a great expression, ‘Never forget’. We can never forget.”
It’s odd that Trump co-opted the bracing slogan about 9/11 given that on that day he observed that, with the Twin Towers coming down, one of his buildings, 40 Wall Street, became the tallest in lower Manhattan.
Once, Trump thought war was a waste of time and lives and money; he dreamed of building hotels on the beaches of North Korea and the Gaza Strip.
After he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, he gave a speech outlining his military policy.
“We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with,” he said. Now he lusts for regime change.
Cadet Bone Spurs has developed a taste for flaunting our unparalleled military and there’s no one at the Pentagon to curb this new appetite for global violence – certainly not the aggro Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth showed again why he is such an unnerving choice to run the US military when he blocked the promotion of two black officers and two women to be one-star army generals.
As The New York Times scooped, that left a gaggle largely of white men, Hegseth’s favourite breed, on the promotion list.
When Trump was a celebrity developer, people laughed at his megalomania in plastering his name everywhere. He grabbed buildings by the crotch. But now that he is president, it’s not funny. It’s foul.
He forced his name on to the Kennedy Center. He scratched the “US” out of the US Institute of Peace and made it the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace. He is branding his name on a class of battleships. A multi-storey banner of his glaring face hangs from the Department of Justice.
He tried to have Washington Dulles Airport and New York’s Penn Station renamed after him, and is plotting a Trump-style arch across from the Lincoln Memorial so tall it could interfere with Reagan National Airport flight paths.
Trump’s handpicked arts commission approved the creation of a commemorative 24-karat gold coin with a scowling picture of the president leaning over a desk with his fists clenched. And King Midas is impelling the Treasury Department to mint a one-dollar gold coin with his visage. Now, in his frenzied quest for ubiquity, he will deface US currency.
The Treasury Department announced on Thursday that Trump would become the first sitting president to have his signature on paper money.Thrusting himself onto legal tender is anything but tender – he’s shoving the US treasurer’s signature off the bills.
Naturally, Trump put a sycophantic man in that job – ending a 76-year stretch of women holding it.
“The president’s mark on history as the architect of America’s golden age economic revival is undeniable,” said Brandon Beach, the treasurer, in a statement.
“Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate but well deserved.” (It’s alarming that the US treasurer does not seem to know that the “operation” in Iran is raising prices and cratering stocks.)
As everyone tries to make sense of this more belligerent Trump, just remember: He’s still “Access Hollywood” Trump. He continues his amoral, pseudo-macho posturing – just with a bigger stage and the biggest weapons.
You can do anything. – The New York Times
Father Richard Rohr identifies the human impulse to solve problems by blaming others:
The human delusion seems to be this: We think someone else is always the problem, not ourselves. We tend to export our hate and evil elsewhere. In fact, this problem is so central to human nature and human history that its overcoming is at the heart of all spiritual teachings. Mature spirituality tries to keep our own feet to the fire—saying, just as the prophet Nathan did in convicting King David, “You are the one!” (2 Samuel 12:7).
Human nature always wants either to play the victim or to create victims—and both for the purposes of control. In fact, the second follows from the first.
Once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse, or attack—and with impunity! It settles the dust quickly, and it takes away any immediate shame, guilt, or anxiety. In other words, it works—at least for a while. So, for untransformed people, there is no reason to stop creating victims or playing the victim.
If we read today’s news, we see the pattern has not changed. Hating, fearing, or diminishing someone else holds us together, for some reason. The creating of necessary victims is in our hardwiring. Philosopher René Girard called this “scapegoat mechanism” the central pattern for the creation and maintenance of cultures worldwide since the beginning.
It’s hard for us religious people to hear, but the most persistent violence in human history has been sacred violence, or more accurately, sacralised violence.
Human beings have found a most effective way to legitimate their instinct toward fear and hatred. We imagine we are fearing and hating on behalf of something holy and noble like God, religion, truth, morality, our children, or love of country. It takes away our guilt. As a result, we can even think of ourselves as representing the moral high ground or as being responsible and prudent. It never occurs to most people that they can become what they fear and hate. It’s a well-kept secret. Without wisdom, we justify violent and even immoral actions for the sake of something honourable like “protecting the children.”
Unless scapegoating can be consciously seen and named through concrete rituals, owned mistakes, shadow work, or repentance, the pattern will usually remain unconscious and unchallenged. The Scriptures rightly call such ignorant hatred and killing “sin.”
Jesus came precisely to “take away” (John 1:29) our capacity to commit it—by exposing the lie for all to see. Jesus stood as the fully innocent one who was condemned by the highest authorities of both church and state (Jerusalem and Rome), an act that should create healthy suspicion about how wrong even the highest powers can be.
“He will show the world how wrong it was about sin, about who was really in the right, and about true judgment” (John 16:8).
Listening to a woman talking on the Brendan O’Connor programme on RTÉ Radio 1 yesterday it was difficult not to think of moving the chairs on the Titanic.
In 2023 Dmitry Medvedev wrote that if the West opposes Russia in Ukraine, “the life that existed before will be forgotten for centuries until smoky debris ceases to emit radiation”.
Last December, Vladimir Putin warned that if Europe “starts a war” with Russia, it will end so swiftly that there would be no one left to negotiate with Russia.
Yesterday the Israelis bombed Tehran, the Houthis fired a missile into Iran. The world is on fire.
Who’s talking about razed Gaza, the war in Ukraine, the violence of Trump and his team. Yet we take time out about how to make coffee or even
The link to the article below is from the BBC website. BBC Radio 4’s 5pm news programme, PM reported on how Germany is in the process of rebuilding its army.
Russia’s threat to Europe has seen Germany become Europe’s most important army.
Bundeswehr head, General Carsten Breuer believes Russia’s present rearmament will allow them to be strong enough to launch an attack on Nato territory by 2029.
The piece below appears on the website of the Irish Dominican Province.
The history of the Angelic Warfare Confraternity begins with the Angelic Doctor himself, St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas was born in 1226 as the youngest son of a noble family in Italy. His parents were so vehemently opposed his decision to become a Dominican that they had him arrested by his own brothers and jailed in one of the family castles. They swore they would not release him until he abandoned the Dominican Order, and they attempted many times to persuade him to change his mind. For a full year he refused to relent.
Finally, after becoming tired of waiting, the brothers of St. Thomas conceived one last plan. They were certain that physical temptation would drive him to break his vow of chastity, after which he would surely abandon his religious vocation. So one night, the brothers introduced a scantily clad prostitute into the room where St. Thomas was being held. The plan did not work as intended. Immediately, St. Thomas snatched a burning brand from the hearth, drove the woman out of the room, slammed the door behind. He then fell to his knees with tears of thanksgiving and prayed to be preserved in his chastity, his purity, and his intention to live the religious life as a son of St. Dominic.
According to the records of his canonization, Thomas fell at once into a mystical sleep and had a vision. Two angels came to him from heaven and bound a cord around his waist, saying, “On God’s behalf, we gird you with the girdle of chastity, a girdle which no attack will ever destroy.” In the records of his canonization, many different witnesses who knew St. Thomas at different points in his life remarked about his evidently high degree of purity and chastity. The angels’ gift preserved St. Thomas from sexual temptation and bestowed upon him an enduring purity that ennobled all his thoughts and actions. Over his lifetime, St. Thomas’s conduct revealed that he had indeed received a special grace of chastity and purity—a grace that he is now ready to share with others through the communion of saints.
The Angelic Warfare Confraternity in Ireland is a spiritual community for the pursuit and promotion of the virtue of chastity. Men are enrolled in order to receive assistance from God in the chaste life, under the patronage of St. Thomas Aquinas & the Blessed Virgin Mary. Each member of the Angelic Warfare Confraternity wears the medal of St. Thomas, and says daily prayers to receive the special graces that the Lord pours out through the Confraternity.
The Confraternity is an apostolate of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), and is directed by the friars of the Order. It has existed in various forms from the 15th century, and was officially established in 1727 by Pope Benedict XIII.
The Confraternity, once very popular in Ireland, no longer has an Irish branch. However, in Autumn of 2026, the Dominican Fathers, in Ireland, intend to relaunch this most essential Confraternity, as a fellowship for Fathers and Sons. Watch this space!
"The law touches us but here and there, and now and then.
"Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarise or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in."
- Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797)
The article below is in the current edition of the National Catholic Reporter. It’s the usual story of clerical sex abuse, cover up, laziness, incompetence, arrogance too.
In an open letter to the pope, Jonathan Ficara recounts how, on the night before his priestly ordination, he encountered a glimpse of how the church can fail to act justly, an experience that would ultimately derail his vocation.This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.
Michael Commane Have you ever noticed when you are down the entire world looks and sounds miserable. I have a dose of the man-flu, which is annoying. It’s not bad enough to take to the bed but bad enough trying to get through a day’s work.
I’m reminded of my time working as chaplain in St Luke’s Radiation Oncology Network, experiencing people suffering great pain but also watching people returning to good health. There’s a flip side to everything.
Thomas Edison, who invented the light bulb in 1879 said: ‘We don’t know a millionth of one per cent about anything.’
That made me ask myself who am I. Honestly, most times I have no idea. There are occasions when I say that God loves me. But do I really believe that or do I say it because I’ve been told to say it, or that I’ve heard it so often I’ve been brainwashed into believing it?
The Irish writer John Banville says that he would love to remove the word ‘evil’ from the dictionary and replace it with ‘chance’. He goes on to say that people will do anything circumstances require. He tells the story of an occasion he tripped and people rushed to help him. He goes on to say that maybe in other circumstances those same people might be shipping him to a death camp. There’s a flip side to everything.
Who or what are we at all?
We take so much for granted. I think I see the glass half empty rather than half full; right now I’m an anxious person. Ever before I visited Iran I recall saying that if the US touched the country it was curtains for the world.
These evenings as I watch the black smoke billowing from oil wells and refineries across the Middle East I can’t help but think we are in a far more serious situation than we realise. And there is nothing we can do about it.
A former work colleague and good friend, who lives in Australia, said to me on Saturday that this current war is closely linked with religion. He pointed out it is Christian US and Jewish Israel in battle with Muslim Iran. I disagree with him but he is far more intelligent than I, and in discussion I find it difficult to counter argue. I’m inclined to say it has to do with oil, power and control, generations of bad government too.
The previous day another man said this war is the work of Zionists. He said it to me in a public place, so I suggested he keep his voice down. Why did I say that, was I afraid his words would upset people? But I don’t agree or believe what he said.
The current world chaos, the fragility of everything, pushes me to say there must be more to life than this. WB Yeats talks about how the centre cannot hold; it looks like that now.
But what if you take a broader look at life and place God at the centre? I’m reminded of the Psalmist’s words: ‘How great is your name, O Lord our God, through all the earth.’ (Psalm 8) There’s a flip side to everything.
Many years ago a newly elected provincial of a religious congregation, chatting with a CEO of a large Irish semi-state body, asked him what advice would he give him in his new job. The two men knew each other over a number of years.
The CEO paused for a moment and then said, that in every organisation, especially large ones, there are three groups of people.
The first third do little or nothing and there is nothing you can do with them or about them. The second third are good, hard, diligent workers, who know what to do and they get on with their work.
He then went on to tell the provincial it’s the third group you need to keep a close eye on. They are the group who can go either way; they can either be influenced by the diligent workers or they can be influenced by the ones who do nothing and are incorrigible.
It sounds great advice. Wise words from the CEO.
But a wisecrack did add the proportions are different when it comes to religious congregations.
According to the Financial Times, US oil companies can expect to make $63 billion as a result of disruptions due to the war the US and Israel are waging on Iran.
And all that money will flow back into the pockets of those who started the war and their friends and allies.
The dead, the maimed. That must be what evil is.
In the weekend edition of The Irish Times there is a two column news item on new appointments in the newspaperpaper. It’s titled ‘Irish Times appointments’. Is the name of the newspaper not 'The Irish Times’?
No doubt, that’s squabbling. But what’s happened Justine McCarthy’s Friday column? It’s been missing now for three consecutive weeks. Has she departed the newspaper or is she on holiday. Whatever the situation, it would be nice, indeed, appropriate to tell the reader what’s happening or what has happened.
It’s always interesting how organisations talk about being transparent.
This link is an article from UCA News; it’s worth a read.
Pope Leo is constantly calling for peace and has also called on those causing wars to check their own consciences. So too are the archbishops in Washington and Chicago, Cardinal Robert McElroy and Cardinal Blase Cupitch.
In contrast Bishop Robert Baron is talking about what grounds are required for a just war. He does not condemn the US administration and might even hint that what they are doing is just. His words appear on right wing YouTube channels.
Is Pope Leo playing an influential role with the US episcopacy? Is it possible he is telling those bishops who are supporters of Trump to stay mum?
It’s interesting that the new archbishop of New York, Ronald Hicks was mentored by Cardinal Cupich.
Below is Kathy Sheridan’s opinion piece in The Irish Times yesterday. It’s a shockingly frightening story of what is happening in front of our eyes.
The Dominican Order was founded over 800 years ago to live and talk about the story of Jesus Christ to the people of the time, in the language of the day.
Reading Kathy Sheridan’s piece it is easy to compare it with the free sheet The Key, which is published by the Irish Dominicans. But it is also most concerning as there is not one word in The Key which has the slightest relevance to anything that Sheridan is talking about. Why not? St Dominic founded the order to speak to all peoples and certainly not exclusively to like-minded people.
The message of Jesus Christ is always relevant but it has to be spoken in a language that is understood by people; it has to ignite hope in the minds and hearts of all people.
Kathy Sheridan
You may have to persuade yourself to watch Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere. The parade of bullish, wealth-obsessed young men, drunk on hatred and on their own voices, their hair, their gym bodies and their rich boys’ toys is nauseating. The Lamborghinis, the trophy apartments, the lackeys filming every vacuous, vainglorious move for social media content, the women flitting through as negligible props will chill the blood. Watch again and the soulless, ignorant young men become savagely wounded children with podcasts, millions of social media followers and a guru in the shape of the alleged rapist and sex trafficker, Andrew Tate.
Watch the relentless scratching for the content to get clicks to lure more lonely, insecure boys into the squalid porn/crypto/ investment/Ponzi schemes with the “cheat codes” that fund the toys that “prove” the success of the brand, luring in even more of the lonely boys. And so on. A perfect circle of exploitation.
The word misogyny requires a mention at this point – not to get all righteously indignant, but merely to note that a hatred of women is the spine of the endless rants. That means ascribing globe-conquering, men-destroying powers to the women – who are simultaneously seen as stupid sets of brainless breasts and orifices who shouldn’t have a vote. It means emoting about protecting your family while boasting about your “open monogamy” arrangement.
One in such a relationship with a woman about to have his third child boasts about going “straight for the threesome” on dates with other women. Another – Harrison Sullivan, aka HSTikkyTokky – gets a cut of OnlyFans “models’” earnings (once known as pimping) while expressing disgust for their activities. Confronted about his homophobic and anti-Semitic rants, he denies it all, bewildered: “No, I’m clip farming.”
Women offer themselves up to be shamed and abused on air, which raises the question of whether they are complicit in some grotesquely unbalanced transaction. Female partners and employees are silenced when Theroux attempts to engage with them. Their role is only degradation. It can never be otherwise.
Schoolgirls might view it through Angie’s lens. She scuttles around for her controlling partner, but her eyes widen when Theroux poses questions to him about his plan to take multiple wives.
Schoolboys might observe Mattie, a vulnerable young man who moved to Miami to make it big, but ended up sleeping in his car and crying every night, grieving for his dead brother. Mattie has found salvation and strength in influencer Justin Waller, whose message is to never give up, because unlike women (who are “born with titties and a vagina” in the words of one guru, and therefore feel entitled to tall men with big incomes), “men are born without value”.
People don’t want to see an empowerment of men, Mattie parrots, musing that maybe men are meant to suffer. But his guru doesn’t believe in depression, so Mattie vows to build generational wealth – though in a world designed to make men fail, he is certain that no 9 to 5 job is going to give him that level of wealth. We can only guess at how he means to achieve it.
It may be through Tate’s The Real World online business school, which boasts 18 “professors” and for which Waller shills, selling subscriptions at $49 (€42) a month. The grift is unending. Theroux invested £500 (€578) in HSTikkyTokky’s scheme; at last sight, it was down to £162.
This has been long in the making. The last US presidential campaign became known as the “testosterone podcast election”, because Donald Trump sat down for hours with the supportive manosphere boys, feeding grievance and victimhood, bringing their squalid language and talking points into mainstream conversation. They helped carry Trump to the White House.
But it’s easier for some observers to blame the feminists and their woke male swing-alongs for causing it. And since Theroux traces the protagonists’ needy, destructive anger to the absence of fathers in childhood, that must be the feminists’ fault too, right?
HSTikkyTokky’s devoted mother worked six-day weeks late into the evening to put him through private school while an older clip shows him trying to connect with his father (a former England rugby international), and saying: “You didn’t reply for 10 years.”
With Theroux, he argues furiously that “there is no trauma there – it’s not something that I’m aware of”.
Tate (not interviewed in the documentary)has said that he learned a lot when “my dad beat the f**k out of me”.
Waller accuses his mother of excluding his father and burning down houses to claim the insurance, although Theroux found no evidence of claims or charges.
We can argue about the original sin that turned little boys into a version of Donald Trump – the world’s most obviously wounded child – but it’s the Matties who should concern us now. He represents all the boys on the cusp, who have been sold the idea of a matrix – a secret world government run by Satanists, feminists and Jews, which is purposely designed to make men fail. Mattie will crumble under his guru’s pressure to man up or he will morph into the worst, emotionally-disconnected version of himself, like his gurus.
The problem for all women and men is that none can deny that the manosphere exists or that it is founded on a Darwinian view of alpha male supremacy.
Women are entitled to be concerned for their sons, for the men they will become and they are also entitled to fear for their daughters who must live with it.
Probably three weeks ago President Trump and his team were seen praying around the presidential desk. Below are words spoken by Pope Leo on ...
