the news you may have missed
Host to the Post Obama Said It, I Believe It, That Settles It
Archbishop Jonathan Blake, a former Anglican The Editor-in-Chief of the Vatican newspaper
priest who is now a bishop of the Open Episcopal L’Osservatore Romano, Gian Maria Vian, told the Italian
Church, is catering to worshipers who cannot get to his newspaper Il Riformista that U.S. President Barack Obama
“Eucharists.” He consecrates hosts, then posts them in “is not a pro-abortion president.” In the interview, Vian
the mail to allow members of the public to say their own explained, “Let me be clear, L’Osservatore stands where
“Masses.” Prices are significantly lower when purchased the American bishops are: we consider abortion a disaster.
in bulk: Blake charges approximately $4 for one conse- We must promote, always and at every level a ‘culture of
crated host, and $20 for 500. According to Blake, when life.’” Commenting on Obama’s speech at the Notre Dame
the hosts arrive, there’s no need to construct a taber- commencement, he added, “What I want to stress is that
nacle: “People can carry a Host with them on a neck yesterday, on this precise and very delicate issue [of abor-
chain or in a specially adapted wallet for emergencies or tion], the President said that the approval of the new law
just to have that sense that Jesus on abortion is not a priority of his administration. The
is with them throughout the day.” fact that he said that is very reassuring to me. It also
Of course, in the eyes of the Catho- underlines my own clear belief: Obama is
lic Church, the wafers Blake is send- not a pro-abortion president” (Catholic
ing through the post are just that: News Agency, May 20).
wafers (Damian Thompson’s “Holy
Smoke,” Telegraph, May 25).
He’s Always Been a Girl
Feeling Profoundly Secular An Omaha couple is allowing
their eight-year-old son to live
France’s First Lady Carla openly as a girl. “She’s been a girl
Bruni-Sarkozy recently announced since the beginning, everything
to the world that Pope Benedict XVI about her, the way she dances and
has forcibly driven her away from the skips around and the things she’s at-
Catholic Church. The Italian-born tracted to,” the boy’s mother ex-
former supermodel and third wife of Nicolas Sarkozy ac- plained to an Omaha television news reporter. “One night,
cused the Pope of “damaging” countries in Africa with his she said, ‘Every night when I go to bed, I pray my inside
stance on condom use, apparently a reference to the Pope’s will match my outside. But it never happens,’” the mother
remark during his March trip that the AIDS pandemic added. The boy’s case came to light when his parents met
“can’t be resolved with the distribution of condoms; on with Fr. Joseph Taphorn, chancello