Day's Links - 2016-09-04

It is interesting to note that there were 300,000 people who showed up for Mother Teresa's beatification in 2003 under Pope John Paul II versus only 120,000 for her actual canonisation under Bergoglio in 2016, a full 13 years later in a period in which the clown in chief says that the Church has never been better.

Of course, there might be co-incidences - for instance, it is likely that there were multiple people beatified on the same day - so we might not want to draw too far-reaching consequences, but it is fair to say that Bergoglio seems to be keeping people away. It was a similar story with Pope John Paul II. For his beatification under Pope Benedict XVI the crowds were much larger than for the canonisation ceremony under Bergoglio, and I suspect that Bergoglio's decision to canonise Pope John XXIII, the man who called the Second Vatican Council, might have had something to do with the lower turnout.

Either way, one thing is clear: When it comes to Rome at least, Bergoglio is no crowd-drawer.

It would seem as the the system does not accept links to the '.university' domain, claiming that it is an invalid URL. For the record, the link to "The Two Michelangelos: Part 1 " is https://blog.pontifex.se/2016/05/23/the-two-michelangelo-part-1/ .

Bishop Fellay gave a nice briefing on what is going on behind the scenes in negotiations with the Vatican, what has been offered to the SSPX. He sounds a very optimistic tone, not so much with regards to the reconsciliation and recognition of the SSPX, but rather to how many bishops and cardinals are opposing Bergoglio. People have woken up, he says, and the SSPX no longer has "monopoly" in criticising Bergoglio's  seemingly endless attempts to destroy the faith. He seems very confident that the Vatican is not trying to lay a trap for the society.