Pope Leo criticises conditions for Palestinians in Gaza

Interesting words from Pope Leo on Christmas Day.

Pope Leo decried conditions for Palestinians in Gaza in his Christmas sermon yesterday, in an unusually direct appeal during what is normally a solemn, spiritual service on the day Christians across the globe celebrate the birth of Jesus.

He said the story of Jesus being born in a stable showed that God had “pitched his fragile tent” among the people of the world.

“How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold?” he asked.

Pope Leo lamented the situation for migrants and refugees who “traverse the American continent”.

Leo, who has criticised US president Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, did not mention Trump. In a Christmas Eve sermon on Wednesday, the pope said refusing to help the poor and strangers was tantamount to rejecting God himself.

The new pope has lamented the conditions for Palestinians in Gaza several times recently and told journalists last month that the only solution in the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people must include a Palestinian state.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in October after two years of intense Israeli bombardment and military operations that followed a deadly attack by Hamas-led fighters on Israeli communities in October 2023. Humanitarian agencies say there is still too little aid getting into Gaza, where nearly the entire population is homeless.

In yesterday’s service with thousands in St Peter’s Basilica, Leo also lamented conditions for the homeless across the globe and the destruction caused by war more generally.

“Fragile is the flesh of defenceless populations, tried by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds,” said the pope.

“Fragile are the minds and lives of young people forced to take up arms, who on the front lines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths,” he said.

In an appeal during the Urbi et Orbi message and blessing, Leo called for an end to all global wars.

Speaking from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica to thousands of people in the square below, he lamented conflicts, political, social or military, in Ukraine, Sudan, Mali, Myanmar, and Thailand and Cambodia, among others.

Leo said people in Ukraine, where Russian troops are threatening cities critical to the country’s eastern defences, have been “tormented” by violence.

“May the clamour of weapons cease, and may the parties involved, with the support and commitment of the international community, find the courage to engage in sincere, direct and respectful dialogue,” said the pope.

For Thailand and Cambodia, where border fighting is in its third week with at least 80 killed, Leo asked that the nations’ “ancient friendship” be restored, “to work towards reconciliation and peace”. – Reuters

Leo and Charles join forces in calling for bridge building

Pope Leo XIV, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of Peter the Prince of the Apostles, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Bishop of Rome, Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City, and Servant of the Servants of God and Charles the Third, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories, King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith stress the importance of building bridges.

In his Christmas Day address King Charles repeated the many appeals of Pope Leo in recent days in calling for peace, unity and respect among peoples.

The below link is from the Guardian newspaper.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/25/king-charles-reconciliation-unity-christmas-message?CMP=share_btn_url

Happy Christmas to readers of Occasional Scribbles

Happy and peaceful season of

Christmas to all readers of Occasional Scribbles.

This blog first saw daylight in June 2007. It’s read on all continents. Since mid-summer this year it is read daily in China, with numbers growing every day.

本博客非常高兴地看到越来越多的读者来自中华人民共和国。

Běn bókè fēicháng gāoxìng de kàn dào yuè lái yuè duō de dúzhě láizì zhōnghuá rénmín gònghéguó.

In the last 24 hours it has been read in 60 countries around the world, the Americas, Asia and Europe.

While it has no official standing within the Irish Dominicans, it is published by an Irish Dominican, is read by a large number of Dominicans, and never been censured by the Dominican Order.

It appears every day.

It’s a privilege to have such a platform.

Thank you for your readership and the occasional comment.

Below is a link to Chris Rea’s Driving Home for Christmas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDt3u2Ev1cI&list=RDDDt3u2Ev1cI&start_radio=1 

Pope Leo stresses the importance of peace this Christmas

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

I overheard a young woman at a rail station on Monday morning talking to someone on the phone, she seemed to be worried about what she was going to buy her sister for Christmas. And then went on telling her that she had most of her presents bought but was still worried about a pullover she was buying for someone. The poor woman was in a state and looked almost distraught.

I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping. I have to admit it was an interesting spectacle and a fabulous distraction on an early morning in December on the way to work.

The Christmas madness turns our roads into car parks. It’s akin to sardine-land on trams, trains and buses with people loaded down with Christmas ware.

Am I being Scrooge before he saw the light? Maybe.

As a child I loved Christmas; I remember the toys I played with when I must have been only five or six; the bus I pushed along the floor, which had real battery operated lights. 

Even in later years Christmas could be great fun, but with both my parents dead, not being married and having no children, there’s something about it which makes me feel an outsider and maybe that’s why I look on at some of the frenetic activity, scratch my head and wonder what’s it all about.

You hear people say it’s for children, and in fear of being excoriated, only yesterday I heard someone say it was ‘a woman’s thing’. Not my words, rather those of ‘an enlightened man’ or at least, so he considers himself.

The very word Christmas seems to set us into a frenzy. And business knows all the right buttons to press to relieve us of our money. It’s a bonanza time for the sellers and hawkers; they know every trick in the book on how to seduce us to empty our pockets. 

And then the day after it’s over the sales begin. It’s a never ending hamster-like wheel that never stops turning, with it reaching a crescendo on Christmas Day.

Might it be that the feast of Christmas has been hijacked?

Our emotions sure are strange things; they can play havoc with us. Christmas is a time when we are all swallowed up by emotional fervour, maybe even fever. There are great aspects to it; it’s paradise for children. It can make for wonderful downtime for families and friends but it can also be a time of loneliness, violence and brutality.

What we are celebrating is the birth of Jesus Christ, the man Christians believe is the Son of God. And to get your head around that is as difficult as understanding the frenzy it causes in all of us. Pope 

Leo on Saturday emphasised the importance of peace in the story of Christmas.

It might do us no harm to take some time out, relax in the now, even think of what it means to say there is a God, what it means to say Jesus Christ is God. Christmas is a great sign of hope.

I wish you all a blessed and peaceful Christmas. 

Thank you for being a reader. It’s a privilege to have this space every week in this great newspaper.

A decisive moment at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942

On this day, December 23, 1945 all attempts to relieve the embattle German troops at Stalingrad were abandoned.

Soviet General Georgy Zhukov said of the action: "The military and political leadership of Nazi Germany sought not to relieve them, but to get them to fight on for as long possible so as to tie up the Soviet forces. The aim was to win as much time as possible to withdraw forces from the Caucasus (Army Group A) and to rush troops from other Fronts to form a new front that would be able in some measure to check our counter-offensive.”

It was all in vain the tactics and determination of the Red Army proved too strong for the Germans.

December 23 was a decisive moment on the Volga. In just over a month Stalingrad was liberated; the first major defeat for Germany.

In summer 1942 Hitler ordered the annihilation of Stalingrad's population, declaring that after its capture, all male citizens would be killed and women and children deported due to their "thoroughly communistic” nature.

Between one and three million people lost their lives at Stalingrad.

It must never happen again.

US openly admits to killing people in the name of vengeance

Last week  US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the strikes in Syria targeted  "ISIS fighters, infrastructure, and weapons sites" and said the mission was named Operation Hawkeye Strike.

"This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance," Hegseth said. "Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue.”

In recent days there is talk in the US of regime change in Venezuela. They argue that the current president is a dictator, causing mayhem in the country.

On that logic why does the US no plan regime change in Russia and China.

It’s now public the US kills in the name of vengeance.

The hopes and dreams of the 1980s/‘90s turning to dust

On this day, December 22, 1989 the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin was reopened. It heralded the coming together of millions of Germans after years of division and disharmony.

On the same day in Romania the government of Nicolae Ceaușecu was overthrown.

The following year, 1990 on the same date, December 22 Lech Walęsa was elected president of Poland.

The world was full of hope. Three decades later we are in a different space; a world full of fear and uncertainty.

Pope Leo keeps calling on us to be people of peace, the importance of reconciling with each other. 

On his visit to Türkiye he used the bridge in Istanbul to stress the importance of us all building bridges and attempting to listen to the other.

Out goes Vincent Nichols in comes Richard Moth

From the BBC website

The Vatican has announced that Richard Moth will be the new Archbishop of Westminster, making him the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

He succeeds Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who has held the role since 2009 and has stepped down aged 80.

For the past 10 years Richard Moth has been Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, and before that served as Bishop of the Forces.

As Archbishop of Westminster he will become president of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and lead an estimated four million Catholics.

Richard Moth, newly appointed as Archbishop of Westminster, speaks at a press conference at the Archbishop's House, in London

Cardinal Nichols reached retirement age when he was 75, but was asked to stay on by Pope Francis. In May he took part in the conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV.

The search for a replacement for Cardinal Nichols was led by the Apostolic Nuncio, or papal ambassador to the UK, who presented a list of potential candidates to Pope Leo.

Earlier this week, Archbishop Moth released a joint statement calling for empathy for "those who come to this country for their safety", reminding Catholics that Jesus's family fled to Egypt as refugees.

He has been one of the bishops leading the Church's response to social justice issues in the UK, including praising the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap.

Speaking at a news conference on Friday, outgoing Cardinal Nichols said his successor would bring "experience and practical wisdom to the life of the diocese".

Archbishop Moth said: "My first task here is to get to know everybody... to get to know priests and people, to get to know schools, to get to know the life of this wonderful diocese here in Westminster".

He said his focus had "consistently been in the area of social justice", adding he had a "particular concern for prisons".

Archbishop Moth will face the challenge of declining numbers of people attending churches nationally, though there is growth in some churches with immigrant Catholics.

In response to the growing use of Christian symbols at, for example, rallies organised by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, Bishop Moth has talked of his concern.

Last weekend, Robinson held an event in London saying he wanted to "reclaim" the country's heritage and Christian identity.

"We are concerned about the tensions that are growing in society and the desire by some groups to sow seeds of division within our communities. This does not reflect the spirit or message of Christmas," Bishop Moth said in a statement with the Archbishop of Birmingham.

The Catholic Church has been heavily involved in providing assistance to those who have suffered in the cost of living crisis.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols is stepping down having held the role since 2009

As archbishop, Richard Moth will also lead the church's constant challenge of dealing with safeguarding issues.

In 2020, a wide-ranging inquiry into child sexual abuse found that between 1970 and 2015 the Catholic Church in England and Wales received more than 3,000 complaints of child sexual abuse against more than 900 individuals connected to the church.

In fact, the leadership of Archbishop Moth's predecessor, Cardinal Nichols, was criticised in the inquiry report, which said he cared more about the impact of abuse on the Church's reputation than on the victims.

At the time, Cardinal Nichols apologised and said he accepted the report, adding: "That so many suffered is a terrible shame with which I must live and from which I must learn."

Cardinal Nichols retires having led the church in England and Wales for 16 years, during which it faced enormous change.

He is the son of two teachers and was born in Crosby. 

The lifelong Liverpool FC fan took up his first role as a priest in Wigan.

In 2010, he welcomed Pope Benedict XVI to England on an official visit.

International Human Solidarity Day

December 20 is celebrated as International Human Solidarity Day, a UN observance promoting unity in diversity, and marks cultural events like Iran's Yaldā (winter solstice eve) and Macau's establishment day. Historically, it's known for events like the 1812 publication of Grimm's Fairy Tales, the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama (Operation Just Cause), and Queen Elizabeth II becoming the longest-living British monarch in 2007, with notable birthdays including John Steinbeck and Harvey Firestone. 

Out goes Cardinal Dolan and in comes Bishop Hicks

Bishop Hicks

From RTÉ News

Pope Leo XIV has replaced Cardinal

Timothy Dolan as leader of the Catholic Church in New York, the Vatican announced, sidelining a prominent US Church figure in a major shake-up of the country's Catholic leadership.

Leo, the first US pope, appointed a relatively unknown cleric from Illinois, Bishop Ronald Hicks, to replace Cardinal Dolan as leader of the nation's second-largest Catholic diocese.

The cardinal, Archbishop of New York since 2009 and a former president of the US Catholic bishops' conference, offered to resign in February upon turning 75, as required by church law. Cardinals often serve until 80, the mandatory retirement age.

"Hicks represents not just a new chapter for New York but for the American church as a whole," said David Gibson, a US church expert.

Bishop Hicks, 58, has been leader of the Church in Joliet, seat of Will County in Illinois, since 2020. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop, or deputy, under Chicago's Cardinal Blase Cupich.

His biography has several similarities to the pontiff's.

They are both originally from south Chicago suburbs but spent years as missionaries in Latin America - Leo in Peru while Bishop Hicks in El Salvador.

"(Leo) is elevating to the most prominent American see an Illinois native very much like himself," said Mr Gibson, director of Fordham University's Center on Religion and Culture.

The Archdiocese of New York is a sprawling and influential institution, serving Catholics across Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island and in seven counties to the north across 296 parishes and hundreds of Catholic schools and hospitals.

Pope Leo's replacement of Dolan comes as the archdiocese is struggling to raise more than $300 million for expected settlements with survivors of clerical abuse.

The archdiocese has entered mediation with some 1,300 alleged survivors, with Cardinal Dolan announcing on 8 December the archdiocese would cut its operating budget by 10 per cent, lay off staff and sell properties as it sought to raise funds for settlements.

Bishop Hicks will be installed in his new role on  February 6, the New York archdiocese said in a statement. Cardinal Dolan will remain as temporary leader in the interim.

Mr Gibson said Bishop Hicks is "a soft-spoken Midwesterner who embraces the reformist line of Pope Francis and who is respected by many across the divides in a polarised church."

The late Pope Francis pursued a reform agenda and tried to make the church more inclusive of a diverse range of viewpoints, sometimes creating pushback from conservative cardinals.

In an October pastoral letter to the roughly 520,000 Catholics in Joliet, Bishop Hicks did not address political issues or church reforms and instead urged his people to focus on their prayer lives and to spread their faith among others.

Cardinal Dolan is seen as a leading conservative among the US bishops, who have become more divided in recent years amid deepening political polarisation in the country.

The cardinal delivered one of the invocations at US President Donald Trump's second inauguration and praised right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk as a "modern-day S .Paul", sparking online criticism from a range of Catholics.

Cardinal Dolan, known for a gregarious personality, is a frequent guest on the conservative Fox & Friends talk show and hosts his own weekly programme on SiriusXM's The Catholic Channel.

Not a word in training on how to deal with passengers

A Dublin Bus driver said this

A PA registered hybrid bus.

week that during his training for the job there was no psychological preparation or mentoring on how to deal with passengers.

He also said that the first day he drove a passenger bus after his training he realised the difference there was between driving an empty bus and a bus filled with passengers. “We were never once told about this important issue and how it matters when it comes to braking.”

In the lead-up to Christmas bus drivers have an even more difficult time bringing passengers to their destinations.

There is a lovely custom in Ireland whereby we thank the driver on leaving the bus. Keep it going.

The ups and downs on a winter’s day commute

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Commuting is an art form, it’s special. We might read about commuting but you have to be in the middle of it to get a handle on what it’s like. It’s a great place for people-watching.

Watching people jump off buses and making a beeline for trams when it is still dark in the morning is a sobering experience. Crowded trains, buses and trams, and complete silence, most people either staring into their phones or working them hard with their fingers. 

Young people use two fingers to work their phones whereas the older folk use one and are far more clumsy at it. These days has anyone anywhere spotted a passenger reading a newspaper on bus, train or tram? They have to be an endangered species.

It’s not permissible to take a bicycle on tram or bus; one can take a bicycle on trains at designated times if there be space available. But it’s permissible to take a fold-up bicycle on bus, train and tram at all times. 

I boarded a Luas in Broombridge with my fold-up; I partially folded and secured it to a bar on the tram. It took up less space than had it been completely folded. 

En route a tall sophisticated-looking man and another man, less sophisticated- looking boarded the tram. They were strangers to each other but agreed the bicycle should not be on the tram. I owned up, said it was my bicycle and explained fold-ups were allowed. The sophisticated man, with a small black book in one hand and a phone in the other launched into a major attack, accusing me of being selfish with no regard for other passengers. 

He kept going, telling me he lived 20 years abroad. It was that that made me react; with a smile and in a loud voice I told everyone within hearing distance that this gentleman had lived 20 years abroad, how sophisticated he must be and how lucky we were to have him on our tram. 

He was not pleased, which led him to use a vulgar expletive. I jumped at the opportunity and explained to him that his sophistication was skin deep. He exited at the next stop. Was I glad to see the back of him. My, was he pompous and so full of himself.

But so far it’s only been a once-off incident. The commuting public seem a grand lot, getting on with their business, going to work, earning a few bob, coming home, doing the things that people and families do. And then back to work the next day.

We are made up of all shapes, sizes, ages, nationalities, beliefs; in many ways it’s a ginormous hodgepodge of human beings. But isn’t that what society is all about. How at all is it held together? I’m scared that we are living in times when that hodgepodge could be so easily manipulated and controlled by dictatorial forces or mega companies that have far too much power. 

It’s great to be a member of the commuting public, indeed part of the hodgepodge that we call democracy.

And guess what, Sunday is the shortest day of the year. After that it’s upwards and onwards. Great news.