Pilgrims awake to sunny skies for final pope Mass(Photo-Video)

Sunny skies have greeted more than a million young people who spent the night in sleeping bags, tents and under tarps awaiting Pope Benedict XVI's final Mass at the end of the Catholic Church's youth festival in Spain.

Dawn broke with sunshine over Madrid's Cuatro Vientos airbase after a fierce thunderstorm Saturday night

forced Benedict to cut short his speech to the crowd at a prayer vigil.

Six people were injured slightly when a tent collapsed. Earlier in the day, hundreds were treated for heat-related problems.

The storm also damaged some makeshift chapels set up on the field's perimeter, forcing organizers to announce Sunday morning over loudspeakers that not everyone would be able to receive Communion during the Mass. A new area at the airbase was also opened to accommodate late arrivals.

China bars HK activist priest as Vatican tension escalates

hina blocked a Hong Kong Catholic priest and rights activist from entering the mainland last week in what he said may have been a show of unhappiness with the Vatican for excommunicating two bishops recently ordained by Beijing.In a sign of escalating tension between the Roman

Catholic Church and Beijing, China said on Monday the Vatican's recent excommunication of the Chinese bishops who were ordained without papal approval was "unreasonable" and "rude.
Father Franco Mella, who recently took part in protests in Hong Kong against China's unilateral ordination of priests, said Chinese immigration officials did not give him any explanation for cancelling his Chinese visa when he presented himself at a checkpoint in China's southern city of Shenzhen on July 19.
"Perhaps it was due to the ordination of the bishop of Shantou (in southern China). That was not recognised by the Vatican and the bishop was then excommunicated by the Vatican," Mella told Reuters on Tuesday.
Mella, who had intended to visit a church in central Henan province, said this was the first time in 20 years of living in Hong Kong that he had been denied entry into mainland China.
Milan-born Mella, 62, is well known for helping refugees and campaigning for residency rights for mainland Chinese women married to Hong Kong men.
"They didn't say anything. They kept me waiting for an hour, watching TV and then three of them came to show me my passport and the stamp on the visa showed it was cancelled," Mella said.
"When I asked them when I can apply to visit China again, they said they didn't know," he added.
Two other Hong Kong-based foreign priests who did not join the protests were also turned away by Chinese immigration officials, one of them on July 21 and the other about six weeks ago, Mella said.
"We are just common priests and we shouldn't bear the confrontation between Beijing and the Vatican," he added.
Mella said he would press on with his work and apply for a China visa in September, when he plans to lead a group of Catholics from Italy on a tour to China.
The Catholic Church has a range of humanitarian projects in China, including helping the disabled and patients of leprosy, or Hansen's disease.
Chinese Catholics, believed to number between 8 million and 12 million, are divided between those who are members of the Church backed by the Communist Party and those loyal to the pope.

In R.I., hopes fading for gay marriage bill

If any state would seem poised to approve gay marriage, it’s Rhode Island.
It has an overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature, the nation’s first openly gay House speaker, a governor who strongly supports same-sex marriage, and two New England neighbors that allow gay couples to wed.
Instead, the state is expected this week to approve civil unions, effectively killing gay marriage legislation with an attempted compromise that has provoked strong opposition from both sides of the issue.

While New York injected new life into the gay rights movement Friday by approving same-sex marriage, Rhode Island’s torturous debate underscores the rocky path the issue has taken in New England, a historically liberal region some activists once believed would be a gay marriage bastion by 2012.
Four out of the six New England states allow gay marriage and two, Rhode Island and Maine, do not. And their prospects for approving same-sex marriage are not imminent.
Voters in Maine repealed their gay marriage law in a 2009 referendum, six months after it was signed by the governor, and gay rights activists are still plotting their next steps there. Rhode Island activists on both sides of the divide are fighting the civil union bill and believe gay marriage legislation may not be revived again until next year, at the earliest.
Hopes for passage were crushed in April when Gordon D. Fox, who came out as gay in 2004 and was elected speaker of the House last year, abruptly reversed course, stunning gay rights activists.
Although a supporter of same-sex marriage, he announced that he would back civil unions instead, arguing that marriage legislation was not worth a vote in the House because there was “no realistic chance’’ it would pass in the Senate.
“We were really blindsided by his decision,’’ said Karen L. Loewy, a lawyer at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, who called Fox’s reversal “incredibly unfair.’’
Gay marriage opponents are pleased, for the moment.
“I’m very hesitant to call it a victory, because we know there’s a lot of work to do and this is not the kind of thing we would celebrate and gloat over,’’ Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of the Providence Diocese said yesterday.
“I know this is a very difficult and sometimes painful issue for people who have same-sex attraction. . . . On the other hand, we will resist legislation that we think is improper or harmful to our culture or society.’’
A Public Policy Polling survey in February indicated that 50 percent of Rhode Islanders support gay marriage, while 41 percent oppose it. But lawmakers have turned back gay marriage bills since 1997, Loewy said.
Lincoln D. Chafee, Rhode Island’s independent governor, said the state has been slow to embrace the issue because it has two influential constituencies that tend to hold traditional views on marriage.
Rhode Island, he said, has among the highest percentage of elderly residents, and about 60 percent of its residents are Roman Catholic, more than any other state in the nation.
“The church is very active here in Rhode Island, calling senators and representatives,’’ Chafee said.
In addition, former governor Donald L. Carcieri, a Republican who led Rhode Island from 2003 until January, was a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage.
“We’ve all been frustrated by the slowness of the progress in Rhode Island,’’ Loewy said.
“In particular, once Governor Chafee came into office, there was cause for more optimism.’’
Massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, by a court order that took effect in 2004. Connecticut was next, with a court ruling in 2008. The legislatures of Vermont and New Hampshire approved gay marriage in 2009. Iowa and Washington, D.C., also allow same-sex couples to wed. Twenty-nine states have constitutional bans on gay marriage, and 12 others have laws against it.
In Rhode Island, the House approved civil unions in May, and the Senate is planning to take up the measure as soon as tomorrow. Forces on both sides, however, are fighting it.
Gay rights activists say the bill includes overly broad protections for religiously affiliated organizations that could, for example, allow a Catholic hospital to bar a gay man from participating in his partner’s medical decisions.
“It’s Draconian, and it has the potential to harm thousands of gay and lesbian couples in loving, committed relationships,’’ said Ray Sullivan, campaign director of Marriage Equality Rhode Island.
The Catholic Church, meanwhile, is battling civil unions because they amount to “approval of an immoral lifestyle and we know it can lead to the approval of same-sex marriage,’’ Tobin said.
Chafee said he is aware of the concerns, but is inclined to sign the measure. He hopes the major push Governor Andrew Cuomo made to approve same-sex marriage in New York will eventually propel full marriage rights for gays and lesbians in Rhode Island.
But he acknowledges that prospect is now far from reality.
“We’re turning the corner,’’ said the governor. “But it’s been slow.’’

St. Peter's jammed for John Paul II beatification

Hundreds of thousands jammed St. Peter's Square and surrounding streets Sunday for the beatification of Pope John Paul II, a celebration to honor the first step to possible sainthood for one of the most adored popes.

The ceremony was a morale boost for a church scarred by the priestly sex abuse scandal, and the scene around the Vatican was reminiscent of John Paul's final days in 2005. Then, some 3 million people staged around-the-clock vigils underneath his studio window and then paid their final respects once he had died.

As selections of John Paul's homilies were recited over loudspeakers, nuns sat in circles playing guitars and singing hymns, fathers hoisted their children on their shoulders so they could see, and scouts and young Catholic groups waved flags from Poland, France, Britain and Argentina.

"He went all over the world," said Bishop Jean Zerbo of Bamako, Mali, who came to Rome for the ceremony. "Today, we're coming to him."

Police placed wide swaths of Rome even miles from the Vatican off limits to private cars to ensure security for some of the 16 heads of state and five members of European royalty attending.

Spain's Crown Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia wearing a black lace mantilla mingled with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, Poland's Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who sidestepped an EU travel ban to attend.

Helicopters flew overhead, police boats patrolled the nearby Tiber River and some 5,000 uniformed troops patrolled police barricades to ensure priests, official delegations and those with coveted VIP passes could get to their places.

Thousands of pilgrims, many of them from John Paul's native Poland, spent the night in sleeping bags on bridges and in piazzas around town, and then packed St. Peter's as soon as the barricades opened over an hour in advance because the crowds were too great.

They stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the main boulevard leading to the Vatican, Via della Conciliazione, as well as on side streets around it and the bridges crossing the Tiber leading to St. Peter's, where Pope Benedict XVI was to celebrate the beatification Mass at 0800 GMT (4 a.m. EDT).

"John Paul was a wonderful man and it's a privilege to be here. It's wonderful to see people from all across the world," said Anne Honiball, 48, a nursing home administrator from Worthing, England who carried a small Union Jack flag.

"We missed the royal wedding but we are Catholics and this was a bit more important, I suppose," said Honibal, a former Protestant who converted to Catholicism 10 years ago.

It's the fastest beatification on record, coming just six years after John Paul died.

Benedict put John Paul on the fast-track for possible sainthood when he dispensed with the traditional five-year waiting period and allowed the beatification process to begin weeks after his April 2, 2005, death. Benedict was responding to chants of "Santo Subito" or "Sainthood Immediately" which erupted during John Paul's funeral.

On Saturday night, a "Santo Subito" banner was emblazoned on the side of the Circus Maximus field, where an all-night prayer vigil kicked off the beatification celebrations in earnest. The event featured testimony of the French nun whose inexplicable cure from Parkinson's disease was deemed miraculous by the Vatican, the miracle needed for John Paul to be beatified.

"He died a saint," Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul's longtime secretary, told the crowd.

After the vigil officially ended, many pilgrims spent the night moving around the center visiting eight churches that stayed open all night, a "white night" of prayer in honor of the late pope.

The beatification is taking place despite a steady drumbeat of criticism about the record-fast speed with which John Paul is being honored, and continued outrage about clerical abuse: Many of the crimes and cover-ups of priests who raped children occurred on John Paul's 27-year watch.

"I hope he didn't know about the pedophiles," said Sister Maria Luisa Garcia, a Spanish nun attending the vigil. "If he did, it was an error. But no one is perfect, only God."

Video montages used during the vigil showed various scenes of John Paul's lengthy pontificate, his teachings about marriage and justice. One of the first shown was of his final Easter, when he was unable to speak from his studio window, too hobbled by Parkinson's, and only managed a weak blessing of the crowd.

Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, the French nun cured of Parkinson's, said that at the time she couldn't bear to watch John Paul's condition worsen because she knew his slow decline would be her fate.

"In him, I was reminded of what I was living through," she told the crowd. "But I always admired his humility, his strength, his courage."

Wearing her simple white habit and a black cardigan, she recounted to the crowd her now well-known tale: She said that on June 2, 2005, she told her superior she felt she could no longer continue her work helping new mothers because her Parkinson's symptoms had worsened and she had little strength left.

Her superior, she said, told her that "John Paul II hasn't had the last word" and that she should pray.

She said she woke up the following morning "feeling something had changed in me." She said she went to the chapel and prayed. "I wasn't the same. I knew I had been cured."

The Vatican's complicated saint-making procedures require that a miracle attributed to the candidate's intercession be confirmed before beatification, and a second one for canonization.

Rome was full of Poles overjoyed that their native son was being honored. Special trains, planes and buses shuttled Poles in for the beatification, which was drawing some 16 heads of state and five members of European royal houses.

Anna Fotyga, a former Polish foreign minister and member of Poland's parliament, arrived on a special train Sunday morning carrying the Polish parliamentary delegation. She reminisced about John Paul's impact on communist Poland in the late 1970s and 80s.

"I was a student at that time, and actually seeing him, listening to him started transformation in Poland, I am sure," she said.

In Krakow, where John Paul was archbishop, two TV screens at two different sites were set up to broadcast the beatification ceremony Sunday from Rome. Houses were decorated with Poland's white-and-red flags and the Vatican's white-and-yellow colors.

The vigil featured televised hookups from five Marian shrines in Krakow, Mexico, Tanzania, Portugal and Lebanon, where the faithful were also celebrating.

Thousands of Mexicans held a prayer vigil in Mexico City's Virgen of Guadalupe Basilica on Saturday while two large screens inside the church projected the celebrations in Rome.

Vatican officials have insisted that John Paul deserves beatification despite the fallout from the abuse scandal, saying the saint-making process isn't a judgment of how he administered the church but rather whether he lived a life of Christian virtue.

But victims' groups such as the U.S. Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests have said the speedy beatification was just "rubbing more salt in these wounds" of victims.