BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The friendship between then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires and Father Gustavo Zanchetta took root during 2005-2011, when the future pope led the Argentinian Bishops’ Conference and the younger priest served as executive undersecretary of that body.

The Pope’s comments about the case in a 2019 Televisa interview revealed that the accused had received an extraordinary degree of personal attention and protection from Francis.

Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI agent who served as the first executive director of the Office of Child Protection for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, identified the problem posed by Francis’ repeated personal interventions.

“It is often very difficult for the leader of any organization to make disciplinary decisions about subordinates with whom they have a positive relationship or whom they hold in high regard,” McChesney told the Register. “Better that the leader recuse him/herself from evaluation of the accusation and…

My mother was a birthing person, one I loved and will love to my dying day and after. What a birthing person!

Vax doing more harm than good? By a long shot, apparently.

The general situation:

It is said that people can only worry about one thing at a time; if so, then I’m sure that few people are currently worrying about the recent increase in Covid cases in the U.K.

This is a good thing – the hospitalisation and mortality rates of Omicron appear to be significantly lower than those of previous variants, so it’s surely time to just accept Covid as another type of cold that’ll give us all an annoying sniffle every couple of years.

Good for the mother country.

But the sticky problem of the vaccines remains. Do they work or have they made things worse? Luckily, the UKHSA (just about) continues to publish the Vaccine Surveillance Report and as a result we can explore how the vaccines are impacting on Covid in England.

And this…

A marriage made in progressive heaven, former Chicago Tribune reporter Dan Hinkel joins the Better Government Association‍

Hinkel’s return to the dirty world of Chicago journalism is not surprising. The reason is that journalism, particularly print journalism, is going through a massive transformation in Chicago, from profit-driven media into a world of non-profit news organizations like the new one Hinkel is joining, the BGA.

The profit-driven Tribune, long a steadfast and crucial independent watchdog over the city, crashed on the ideology of contemporary progressive journalists like Hinkel. A stale, sterile, and barely believable narrative about the city was imposed with a monotony that might drive any truly curious reader away.

The journalists and editors at the paper blamed external forces like big bad capitalism, but never their own glaring refusal to look at the city with fairness, let alone originality. Chicago print journalists are ideologues, and ideologues…

It’s a lesson in what and whom to believe, how seriously we should take what we hear, and of course what science to follow.

WE ARE LED, LITERALLY, BY THE MENTALLY DEFECTIVE: Biden’s Remarks at ‘Equal Pay’ Event Were a Gaffe-Filled Dumpster Fire.

See also: Has Nancy Pelosi Been Drinking on the Job Again? It Sure Looks That Way…

104 Posted at 12:47 pm by Glenn Reynolds

The ‘Smile Free’ Campaign – The Daily Sceptic

The Government requirement for healthy people to wear a face covering in a range of indoor community settings, purportedly to reduce the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has arguably been the most insidious of all the coronavirus restrictions.

Anyone reluctant to wear a face covering risks being challenged by others: “It’s only a mask”; “It’s no big deal”; “If it prevents just one infection, it’s worth it”. These comments are based on the premise that healthy people have nothing to lose from donning a mask when moving around their communities, but they fail to recognise an important truth:

Masking the healthy is not, and has never been, a benign intervention.

You’re joking.  Oh? Don’t laugh. Here’s a list:

For the purposes of this article, let’s leave to one side the accumulating evidence that face coverings are associated with:

Headaches

Skin irritation/dermatitis

Respiratory…

“Grave questions” arise from what he’s said about churches’ crossing the Tiber, i.e. joining the flock of Peter:

After the announcement of Anglicanorum coetibus, signifying the erection of the Ordinariates, the senior Anglican in Argentina … so he narrates … received an invitation from H E Cardinal Bergoglio.

He “called me to have breakfast with him one morning and told me very clearly that the Ordinariate [authorizing Anglicans’ acceptance into full communion with Rome] was quite unnecessary and that the church needs us as Anglicans.”

Stay where you are, we like it that way, he told the man.

Some years later, after election to the See of St. Peter, [Pope Francis] said to Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk (Pembroke College Oxford and ‘Foreign Minister’ of the Moskow Patriarchate):

“. . . the Catholic Church will never allow an attitude of division to arise from her people. We will…

Child being one of her three, a mother telling this in the 412-member Public group Oak Park [IL] Back to Normal:

Today was my kids’ first day of school with masks optional. They are in 4th, 1st, and Pre-K.
My youngest’s first words when I went to pick her up: “Mamma, you know ***’s sister ***? My friend from carpool? I got to see the rest of her face today! She is so beautiful! And she wears the prettiest blue earrings.”

And at bedtime: “You know Mamma, I never really saw Ms. ***’s lips and teeth and smile before today. Just a little bit quickly when she took a quick drink of water. I really like her smile.” Ms. *** has been her teacher since August 2020!

The 3 and 4 year olds in her mixed age Montessori class still aren’t allowed to unmask because…Oak Park. One of her…