Click To Pray, a prayer app endorsed by the Pope with hundreds of thousands of users worldwide, has leaked people’s names and email addresses for months - or longer - according to an ethical hacker who said she found and reported the security vulnerability six months ago to no avail. This app needs to take a vow of silence when it comes to your personal information.

I'm talking about this app : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sirma.mobile.bible.android

You can always criticize lovingly, be disappointed, or even (temporarily )angry, i don't see why hate would ever be necessary/useful to change the other one. I may be wrong but just don't see it.

Can we dislike others while loving them ? I don't think so, not without recognising that they have many good sides worthy of our love/protection, and not while misrepresenting them as evil/bad by focusing only on what we perceive as flaws.
You don't help your enemies improve by correcting mistakes they made, but we'll warn those we love since we care about them. And again we should love everyone if we believe in a christian City of God.

Interesting to add, perhaps : https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/true-spirituality-confronts-the-abuses, it's an impression i got when reading parts of the Philokalia : these monks want to feel God by denuding themselves from their thoughts, but should they not dedicate their lives to make the kingdom/city of God descend upon our Earth instead, what 'does the most good'/'serves God&humans the best' ? At least they're abstaining from evil, which is already remarkable enough, (inter)acting is always a risk.

https://x.com/i/status/2058511183519351052

And also a very interesting reading, as always when it's pious/virtuous : Sacrosanctum concilium, constitution of the sacred liturgy, promulgated on the 4th of December, 1963.

They're worshipping a loser, tortured to death, whose martyred body welcomes you at the entrance of any small village, instead of a muscular guy in all his glory, because we chose long ago that our height should be measured in regard to the lowest of us. This is the religion of the powerless, so extreme, whose priests sacrificed/'are still sacrificing' their lives at the service of the weakest among us, whose pope could kiss the feet of the lowest of the low.

Why is it that every christian book i read is so good(, and liturgical songs produce the best feelings) ? If i could only ever read one genre throughout my life, then i wouldn't choose poetry or philosophy, but christian books, they're so deeply concerned with doing/being good, i will never care about being accepted or rejected by them, but only about seeking the good life(, which is the purpose of all religions, and at the heart of other civilizations), nothing else matters.
(and being/doing good never meant being defenseless against non-virtuous people, on the contrary defending them from us could/would mean defending us from them, as long as we still can)

You’ll say the Kingdom is not of this world. Right. But it wouldn’t hurt to give the hands of the dock a little shove all the same. My grouse against you people isn’t that poverty still exists — oh, no ! And I’ll even grant you this much. I’ll agree that it’s the job of old fools like me to feed and clothe and look after them and keep them clean. But since they’re really your responsibility I cannot forgive you for sending them to us so dirty. See what I mean ?
Why, damn it all, after twenty centuries of Christianity, to be poor ought not still to be a disgrace. Or else you have gone and betrayed that Christ of yours ! There’s no getting away from that, good God Almighty !
You have every means of humbling the rich at your disposal, for setting their pace. The rich man wants to be well thought of, and the richer he is the more he wants it. If you would only have the pluck to make them take the back seats in church round the holy water stoup, or even out on the steps — why not ? It would have made them think. They’d all have had one eye on the poor men’s seats, I know ’em ! The first everywhere else, but here in the House of God, the last !
Can you see that happening ? Oh, of course I know the thing wouldn’t be easy. If the poor man really is the living image of Jesus — Jesus Himself — it’s awkward to have him sitting there in the front row, displaying his obscene misery, his face from which in two thousand years you haven’t yet been able to wipe the spittle.
Because first and foremost the social problem is a matter of honour ; it is the unjust humiliation of poor men which makes your pauper. Nobody’s asking you to fatten up people who from father to son have in any case lost the habit of getting fat, who’d probably always be thin as laths ; and at a pinch, to make the thing look a bit more decent, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t eliminate freaks, unemployables, drunkards — anything too uncomfortable to look at.
The fact remains that a poor man, a real poor man, an honest man, goes of his own accord to what he considers his proper place, the lowest in the House of the Lord. And you’ve never seen and never will see a beadle dressed up like a hearse come down to look for him, at the very back of the church, to lead him to the altar rails with all the ceremony due to a prince — a prince in the order of Christianity.
That notion usually makes your colleagues smirk. Vanity, rubbish… But why the devil must they always show such respect to the powerful of this earth, who revel in it ? And if such respect is vain and empty, why is it always so expensive ?
“We should have people laughing at us,” they say—“a tramp sitting in the choir would soon become comic.” All right. But when the tramp has definitely changed his rags for a plain deal box, when you’re sure — absolutely certain — there’s no more danger of his wiping off the snot with his fingers or spitting on your lovely carpets, what do you do with the fellow then ?
Get along with you ! You can think me a fool, but I’ve got hold of the right end of the stick ; the Pope himself wouldn’t change my mind, and I’m only saying what your own saints practised, my dear fellow, so it can’t be so foolish as all that. On their knees to paupers and cripples and lepers—that’s the idea we get of your saints.
Queer sort of army yours must be where a mere passing corporal need only give the royal Host a patronizing tap on the shoulder, while field-marshals are grovelling at his feet.
He paused, a little uneasy at my silence.
I know I have very little experience, yet I seemed instantly to recognize a certain inflection betraying some profound spiritual hurt. Others perhaps might then be able to find the right words to appease and persuade. I don’t know such words.

It's far from the best quote of that book, and even further from being the best book, but the proposal made me smile, and there's a christian feeling in it, i think.

What i mean is to thank the Church for making us worthy enough for God to grace some of our ancestors, bringing us to where we were. And i'm sorry for our betrayal, it's a meager consolation to know that we 'will get'/'are getting' what we deserve for giving up on our christian ideals.

From 1 Thessalonians 5

I'll prefer an anti-communist christian to a communist asshole, always.
It still feels however that christianity failed in the past ? And it still feels that it was because they weren't christian enough.
Since i won't ever manage to reach the status of a true christian in my lifetime it's more than enough for me, but sure, those saying that we don't need religion to strive for virtue are right, although it won't happen naturally, and we didn't replace religion with moral teachings(, or anything at all).

« but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. » — John 4:14

https://x.com/Pontifex/status/1981344866107043896
All glory is always to God. And may « Thy Kingdom come ».

Feel free to consider this a useless post(, i don't).

Source

Here : https://cepr.net/publications/jubilee-report-2025

An a.i. synthesis(, sry for not doing it myself, i realize that these bullet points lack clarity) :

Context & Diagnosis

• The developing world faces a triple crisis :
  • Unsustainable public debt burdens
  • Underdevelopment and poverty
  • Disproportionate impacts of climate change

The global financial architecture is biased toward the Global North, rewarding capital holders while penalizing vulnerable nations.
Developing countries are defaulting on their people and future, not just on creditors.

Root Problems Identified :

• Procyclical capital flows destabilize poor countries : money floods in during booms, then flees during crises.
• Private creditors and international financial institutions have enabled unsustainable and extractive lending, yet avoid consequences.
• Debt restructurings are slow, shallow, and unfair, often dictated by powerful creditors.
• Lack of a sovereign bankruptcy mechanism leads to repeated crises.
• Vulture funds exploit legal systems to sue poor countries for full repayment.
• Blended finance and public-private partnerships often privatize profits and socialize risks.

• 3.3 billion people live in countries spending more on interest payments than on health.
• 2.1 billion live in countries spending more on debt than on education.
• In Africa, 57% of the population lives in countries spending more on debt than on health or education.
• In 2023, $30 billion was transferred from poor countries to private creditors in the Global North.
• Since 2013, public debt in Africa has been growing faster than GDP.
• Only 8% of global blended finance since 2015 has gone to low-income countries.
• more here

Seven Key Principles Proposed :

• No net financial transfers from debt-distressed countries to creditors.
• End IMF and multilateral development banks bailouts of private or bilateral creditors.
• Ensure shared responsibility between borrowers and lenders.
• Require timely and sufficient restructurings to restore sustainability.
• Prioritize economic growth over austerity.
• Make credit quality(, long-term, countercyclical, development-aligned,) a global priority.
• Redesign Debt Sustainability Analyses to include climate vulnerability and social impacts.

Recommended Actions :

• Launch a new HIPC II initiative to cancel unsustainable debt, including private creditors.
• Create a Jubilee Fund for distressed-debt buybacks using discounted bond prices.
• Expand Special Drawing Rights and make their distribution more equitable.
• Reform IMF interest and surcharge policies.
• Establish an international sovereign debt resolution mechanism (bankruptcy court or UN-backed mediation).
• Create global climate and commodity stabilization funds.
• Introduce capital account regulations to reduce volatile capital flow exposure.
• Mandate greater transparency and oversight in public borrowing and lending practices.

« Inequality is the root of social ills. » — Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium §202
« We must rethink the whole economic system to guarantee the dignity of the human person and the common good. » — Fratelli Tutti §168

There's a timeline here : https://www.jubileeusa.org/jubilee_2025_hub

It begins with a description on many pages of the shipwreck of the "italian Titanic" : the SS Principessa Mafalda. His grandparents and their only son had bought their tickets for that crossing from Italy to Argentina, but since they couldn't sell what they owned in time they had to exchange their tickets. It is the occasion to plead in favor of a better world for migrants, the problem isn't inequalities but unfairness, your fate shouldn't be determined by your family and country of birth, that's not fair(, or "meritocratic").
Where is our heart when migrants travel to die in the Mediterranean sea ?

p.31 :
« Each day the world seems more elitist, and each day crueler, toward those who have been cast out and abandoned. Developing countries continue to be drained of their finest natural and human resources for the benefit of a few privileged markets.
Genuine development is inclusive, fruitful, directed toward the future and future generations, whereas false monopolistic development makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, in all times and all places. And the poor are not forgiven for anything, not even for their own poverty. They cannot allow themselves to be timid or disheartened, they are looked upon as a threat or incompetent, they are never able to see an end to their suffering. The creation of a hostile architecture has even been postulated to keep them out of sight, even off the streets. Walls can be built and entrances barricaded to create the illusion of being safe from those who are left outside. But it won’t be like this forever. The “Day of the Lord,” as described by the prophets (Amos 5:18 ; Isaiah 2:5 ; Joel 1:3), will break down the barriers created between countries, and will replace the arrogance of a few with the solidarity of many. The condition of marginalization in which millions of people are oppressed cannot last much longer. Their cry rises and encompasses the whole earth. In the words of Don Primo Mazzolari, a great Italian parish priest, the prophetic, luminous, and “inconvenient” face of an unclerical cleric : “The poor are a constant protest against our injustices ; the poor are a powder keg. If it is set on fire, the world will explode.”
We cannot escape from the pressing call that the Word of God entrusts to the poor. Wherever we look, the compass of Holy Scripture points to those without enough to live on, the oppressed, those reduced to prostration, the orphan, the widow, the foreigner, the migrant. Jesus was not afraid to identify himself with this countless throng. “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). Not for those like me, not for my group, but for the lowest, hungry, thirsty, naked. To escape from this recognition is like watering down revelation, mystifying the Gospel, turning it into color and show, not presence. Because there is no “first” for Christians, apart from “first before the last.” The “last” that every day cry out to the Lord, begging to be freed from the sufferings that afflict them. The last in the fringes of our city life. The last deceived and left abandoned to die in the desert ; the last tortured, abused, raped in detention camps ; the last who defy the waves of a pitiless sea.
The wars being fought today involve several regions of the world, but the weapons with which they are fought are produced in entirely different regions—in those same regions that then refuse and turn away the refugees who have been generated by those weapons and by those conflicts. »

p.52 :
« I had just been contemplating the immense beauty of the countryside in the whole of that area, men and women who work and look after their families, children playing, old people daydreaming… and now i found myself walking among thousands and thousands of graves that all looked the same. Gravestones of young men. And so, as I was celebrating Mass there, with bishops and hundreds of priests from every country involved in the 1914–18 conflict, all i could say was : War is folly ! Before me i had a physical demonstration of it, in brutal full view. While God pursues his creation and calls on us all to assist in his work, war destroys, it destroys everything. Even the human being, God’s most beautiful creation. It upsets everything, even the bond of fraternity. War is folly, and its mad development plan is destruction. Over the entrance to that cemetery hovered the scornful adage of every war : “What does it matter to me ?” This is Cain’s answer to God : “Am i my brother’s keeper ?” (Genesis 4:9). An answer that looks no one in the face : old people, children, mothers, fathers… »

p.56 :
« While those who declared war had always fought it by sending others to die on their behalf, while war was always fought “For the king !” but the peasant was the one who died in it, then the First World War, our grandfathers’ war, represented a kind of watershed. Since then, in every conflict, from the Middle East to the Balkans, from Asia to Africa, the great majority of victims — indeed 80 percent since the start of this twenty-first century — have been from the civilian population. A war correspondent has written : “In the modern-day war, the so-called collateral victims are now the soldiers.” From almost every conflict of the past three decades, it has been less difficult to get out alive wearing a military uniform than, perhaps, the red T-shirt of a young child. Most of all, it is those who are defenseless that get massacred : one in three of them is a child. It is those who have merely suffered the folly of war. Forget heroism, forget rhetoric : war is none other than baseness and shame to the highest degree. A shame that all of us must feel as ours, because it is tragic when people no longer feel ashamed about anything. »

p.150 :
« As a child, when someone commented about such things, or another quarrel loomed, i hid and cried, and sometimes made a votive offering for them not to happen. They deeply upset me. At home, thank God, my parents and we five children lived in peace ; but i think these events left a mark upon me and increased in my heart the desire to ensure that people do not fight, that they remain united. And, if they argue, that they then make peace. »

p.167 :
« One day, i gave my bicycle to a classmate, who had an accident and damaged it. I told him he would have to get it repaired, and he did : his mother had to pay. Causing her no doubt to make sacrifices, since they certainly weren’t wealthy. Well, this guilt remained with me for years. For many years, i felt i had been unfair, that i had been ungenerous, and this feeling stayed with me for a long while.
(...)
This went on for three months. For the first few days, my police escorts kept to themselves.
Then, they saw that i wanted the experience to be as ordinary and simple as possible, and we started talking about all kinds of things.
One day, i told them i had been to school in Ramos Mejía. “My father was there too,” one of the young police officers said. “What’s your name ?” I asked. “Peña,” he replied. “Is your father José Valentin ?” It was. This man was the son of the boy in the bicycle story ! I got him to give me his father’s telephone number, i called him, apologized at last, and once again, that sense of regret that had stayed with me for fifty-nine years was finally gone. »

p.414 :
« The parish priest, Father Toufic Bou Merhi, before he abandoned the building, along with a caravan of refugees, taking the relics and the blessed sacrament with him to the capital, launched a moving and dramatic plea during Mass, addressed to the weapons themselves :
“Dearest bomb, i beg you, leave us alone. Dearest missile, do not explode. Do not obey the hand of hatred.
I am turning to you because the hearts of those who are in a position of responsibility have hardened, and the brutal treatment of people has spread, therefore, listen to me, I implore you.
They call you smart bombs ; be smarter than those who use you.”
There is no one left to kill, he said. Families are exterminated. Sila, a girl of six, lost her father, mother, her little sister of eighteen months, her grandfather, grandmother, and her uncle with all his family. The day before that homily, a rocket destroyed nine houses fifty yards away from the convent. Stones fell into the courtyard where the refugees were staying. Terror, screaming, crying, and fear mingled with the blood of the injured.
I am with them. I am with those forced to leave their homes, with their families tormented, in ruin. I am with those who are forced to abandon their schools and their work, to wander in search of some place where they can escape from the bombs. I am with mothers who grieve for their dead children, and with children who are even denied the right to play. I am with those who are afraid to look up, because fire rains from the sky.
All of them are in my thoughts each day, in my prayers, and sometimes in my tears.
Faced with the flood of violence, while tears run down their faces, the mouths of children, in every part of the world, repeat Munch’s scream each time : “Enough !” The same cry that I make, the same prayer that I have repeated in telephone calls to heads of state, in appeals to those who have the grave responsibility to govern nations. “Enough ! Bring an end to the noise of weapons. Think of the children.”
Some time ago, i was shown a drawing that illustrated the eternal conflict in Afghanistan. It was the outline of a maimed child, with a dotted line in place of the face. By it was written : “If you want to understand what war is, stick a photograph of your child here.” This is the war, the terror that is not captured on the films taken by drones but in the wards of field hospitals : in Kabul or in Kiev, in a kibbutz or in Gaza, or Tyre. To think of all those children as your own children is the antidote to the dehumanization that transforms every just claim to existence into an increasingly bloody battle for the non-existence of the other. »

I know that the original meaning is about death, and this tweet can certainly be interpreted as such.
But ~my interpretation of this tweet reminds us of something important about what christianism is : you're dead to the world, and have to practice being so. Enough books talked about this so there's no need to develop or include an enumeration of all the mundane/worldy things that distract us from what really is important.
Obviously we shouldn't act for our own benefit, but it could be said to the extreme that we're not acting for others but for God.

And if you're new to christianity or other religions, to the point of not understanding(, unlikely), or if you want examples of books talking about it, i've listened to the four volumes of The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, ~6 months ago(, there's probably better but at least it's not too theoretical, and it's a classic).

Sometimes I think that vocational discernment should be “mandatory”: such a fundamental part of a Christian’s life journey cannot be left to individual initiative, but should be an integral part of Christian initiation, which in my opinion should continue until after the age of 20 (with the Confirmation). Here in Italy, many young people, even good Catholic, are not naturally led to question themselves about their vocation (whether it be consecrated life, marriage, priesthood, or none of them).

After the death of Pope Benedict (R.I.P. Bro) the media has decided to make it as dramatic as possible. It is important to understand what is actually going on and not let them jump to the conclusions for us.

@Catholic@chirp.social