HABEMUS CARDINALEM

TODAY... Vatican City, Rome

At the PAPAL CONSISTORY, we welcome the newly elevated PRINCES of the CHURCH to the College of Cardinals:

• Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State
• Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, Italy
• Archbishop Orlando B. Quevedo, Philippines
• Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Muller, Germany
• Archbishop, Beniamino Stella, Italy
• Archbishop Vincent Nichols, United Kingdoms
• Archbishop Leopoldo José Brenes Solórzano, Nicaragua
• Archbishop Gérald Cyprien Lacroix, Canada
• Archbishop Jean-Pierre Kutwa, Ivory Coast
• Archbishop Orani João Tempesta, Brazil
• Archbishop Gualtiero Bassetti, Italy
• Archbishop Mario Aurelio Poli, Argentina
• Archbishop Andrew Yeom Soo Jung, Korea
• Archbishop Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, Chile
• Archbishop Philippe Nakellentuba Ouédraogo, Burkina Faso
• Archbishop Chibly Langlois, Haiti

...and the following will be cardinal emeritus, without voting rights:

• Monsignor Loris Francesco Capovilla, Italy
• Archbishop Fernando Sebastián Aguilar, Spain
• Monsignor Kelvin Edward Felix, Saint Lucia

Read more: http://www.news.va/en/news/consistory-a-closer-look-at-the-new-cardinals

A Lady named BERNADETTE...

Marie Bernarde "Bernadette" Soubirous (7 January 1844 – 16 April 1879) was the firstborn daughter of a miller from Lourdes, France, and is venerated as a Christian mystic and Saint in the Catholic Church.

Soubirous is best known for her participation in the Marian apparitions of "a small young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at a cave-grotto in Massabielle where apparitions are said to have occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858. She would later receive recognition when the lady who appeared to her identified herself as the Immaculate Conception.

Despite initial skepticism from the Catholic Church, Soubirous's claims were eventually declared "worthy of belief" after a canonical investigation, and the Marian apparition is now known as Our Lady of Lourdes. Since her death, Soubirous's body has apparently remained internally incorrupt, but it is not without blemish; during her third exhumation in 1925, the firm of Pierre Imans made light wax coverings for her face and her hands due to the discoloration that her skin had undergone. These masks were placed on her face and hands before she was moved to her crystal reliquary in June 1925.

The Marian shrine at Lourdes (Midi-Pyrénées, France) went on to become a major pilgrimage site, attracting over five million Christian pilgrims of all denominations each year.

On 8 December 1933, she was canonized by Pope Pius XI as a Saint of the Roman Catholic Church. Her Feast Day is observed on 18 February.

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernadette_Soubirous