GOOD MORNING! - Papa-pix to start your day

Dear Miriam...We share your anguish over this senseless and outrageous crime. The best consolation is that little Tomasso is now with God.

Also, the kidnappers are in police hands and have confessed. They are two men who had done some construction work for the boy's family. On March 2, they kidnapped 18-month-old Tomasso Onofri, who suffers from epilepsy, to extort some money from the boy's father, who was supposed to get it from the postal office that he supervises in Parma.

They said they killed him because he cried too much! To kidnap a baby is bad enough, to kill him (for whatever reason) makes no sense at all!

On March 3, the second day of his Lenten retreat, the Holy Father asked the Secretary of State to send a telegram in his name to the Archbishop of Parma to express his sympathy to the baby's family and his prayers for his safety, as well as to appeal to the then-unknown kidnappers to return the boy unharmed.

Let us pray, too.

When I was in Rome, occasionally in the evening I would turn on the TV. I would see that sweet little face on the screen. There was usually an interview with - who I believed were his parents. I didn't understand... but I knew that that sweet little one was either missing or had died... I knew the story wasn't happy. Yes, that sweet little boy is in Heaven with Jesus. No matter what civil authorities do to those 2 animals who killed him, God has even worse in store for them.

---

Scritto da: Ratzigirl 02/04/2006 2.20
This evening, in Italy, there was a bad news on our TV.....A child of 1 years old was killed by three killers after the kidnapping.
It's been a month of searchin, and this evening the child's body was rescued by police....
I ask you a minute for a preyer for Tommaso's family.
As I said in public forum, Tommaso needn't preyer, because innocent victims like him are already next to Jesus in Heaven...
Thank you...

---

How sad, Ratzigirl, these are horrible news. I pray for Little Tommaso and his family!
Did Papa not mention this kidnapping during his last angelus?

Yes,he did.
He asked preyer for little Tommy and his family before the end of angelus.He was very sad, and he said these words with tears in his eyes....

Ratzigirl rightly captioned these pictures "angelic profiles".
(I added the small photo which is not a profile but is angelic.)






And this angel tonight knelt/stood for almost an hour by an open window on a chilly spring night, protected only by his red Papal cape - and, I like to think, by his own guardian angel Karol!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/04/2006 23.28]

From yesterday's general audience -
One can understand why Ratzigirl captions this picture on her ImageShack file simply 'ohmiodio'....


Can anyone be more engagingly adorable?

OH MIO DIO --- YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN A HUNDRED TIMES

What a photo!!! How can a shy, bookish, nearly 80-year-old look so vigorous and ruggedly handsome???

Oh, but didn't Papa look angelic on Sunday night,wearing his red cloak [I hope it was warm enough], and standing at his window all that time, while the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary were prayed - and he looked glorious himself!
I like to think he has two guardian angels now: big John Paul The Great and little Tomasso.
As for the photos from yesterday's audience.........even this garrulous female is rendered speechless.......except to say: wind of the Holy Spirit, you can blow his magnificent hair around as much as you like and blow that zuchetto right away! Yesterday's bare-headed Papa was just......bellissimo!

Love to all dear friends here - Mary x

I may use this as a signature - sogni d'oro, girls, even if it is the Good Morning thread!
Love, Mary x

---

Yesterday's bare-headed Papa was just......bellissimo!

---

Oh, Maryjos, yes he was and is bellissimo. I couldn't stop looking at his hair, obviously the wind is on our side and knows what we want to see.

From Paparaxvi, whose term 'profilo da infarto' (infarct-inducing profile) for this picture I have translated into
"heart-stopping". The second profile was lifted by Ratzigirl from the korazym site. Both are from the for-me-epochal Q&A encounter with the youth of Rome and Lazio yesterday.

Even with a 38-degree(C.)fever, Ratzigirl is able to serve up these treats - Pictures like these leave me speechless!

thanks Ratzigirl!! and hope youre feelin better now

Phew! We're all going to have a fever after looking at these latest pics! Whooooooooooooooooooooooooosh!
Mary to Earth: "I'm in orbit and I may be some time"
Mission Control to Mary: "Receiving you, but you're making the planet wobble dangerously...."

Before we go on to the Palm Sunday pix, Paparatzifan came up with two more
of Super-Papa from super-Thursday. She posted it to make Ratzgirl 'recover"
from her super-flu, but Miriam answers- "Now the fever is worse than ever.
Ratzi-fever, that is. Confess it, are you trying to kill me?"



P.S. I can't resist the comment - and some of you may detest that I should even
make a "comparison' at all - but when I first saw the second picture that I posted
in Post #1990 two posts above, I thought that was how Robert Redford might
have looked like if he had aged as beautifully as Papa has.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/04/2006 2.21]

Too bad that mark cuts across Papa's face in the first photo (British PapaFan must be shuddering), but Ratzigirl notes
that Papa's eyes are so crystalline they reflect the shade of the palm frond he is holding.

And the third profile from today was selected by Paparaxvi.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/04/2006 2.35]

It's been some time (two weeks since the Fatima pictures?) that we have not had
"new" photographs of pre-Papa Ratzi, but Paparatzifan just found a couple:


And Ratzigirl counters with 4:



Earlier Kiko posted this one taken from the Russian site, at about the same time Ratzigirl posted in another thread
the same picture showing it was one of Ratzi's official pictures as Archbishop of Munich because it carries his signature across the bottom.

The photo appears to be on a book jacket as the text fragment reads like a biographical blurb on the Cardinal, and it actually says some things I had not read before, and which make me very curious to find out what this book or pamphlet was. Loosely translated, the fragment says:
"...was at the same time one of the theological teachers who most aroused enthusiasm. Reproduced by hand-copying, many of his lectures found their way to German-speaking theological faculties. This was not by accident. The theologian Joseph Ratzinger was always conscious that his meditations and homilies must also be useful for pastoral care: 'Thought is best preserved if it is said well.'
"Named honorary papal prelate in 1976 [did any of you know this before?], Ratzinger was a member of the Commission on Doctrine of the German bishops conference...[I can't make out the phrase under the black line]. When he was called to become Archbishop of Munich and Freising in March 1977, he did not conceal how hard it was for him to give up what he had been doing up to that time. Succeeding the late Cardinal Doepfner who died eight months earlier, he followed the model of his highly-cherished Church Father, St. Augustine, who also had to give up the teacher's lectern for the bishop's chair."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/04/2006 4.03]

Nan: Mission Control, sorry about the sudden lift off to orbit but... you see... the forum... the photos... sigh

Mission Control: Roger, Nan... we have you on radar... Mary warned us... that you would be susceptible to sudden orbits... please let us know your flight plan...

Nan: Vatican City of course!

Mission Control: Ok... we should have known that... let's see there are already several of your sisters already in orbit over the Vatican... could we interest you in

Nan: I'll take my chances in close orbit around Vatican City, thank you.

Mission Control: Roger, that Nan.

Super-Papa Photo is Super

Love that photo above, Teresa's #2010, of Papa sitting there so joyful and relaxed while those college kids asked him such difficult questions. It must be nice to be so brilliant that you aren't worried in the slightest about trying to answer tough and delicate questions off-the-cuff in front of a live, young audience of thousands plus millions of television viewers. What a man!!

[Modificato da benefan 10/04/2006 5.40]

How right you are! Great points all, Benefan... But the sad thing is it's been three days since that event, and no one has really reported it as fully and as analytically the way it should have been - considering that it was unprecedented in Papal history, and considering that this Pope is the brilliant mind that he is! I'm counting on Sandro Magister to do it justice eventually, or perhaps Vittorio Messori...I'm missing the German Vaticanistas these days, since Frankfuerter Allgemeine Zeitung and Sueddeutsche Zeitung stopped making their online articles available for free. Die Welt is still available, but Paul Badde hasn't written anything about the Pope since the encyclical. (I have to hope that our German sisters would not let any important article slip by without their posting it or commenting on it, so I get alerted.) But I doubt the Germans would have shown more initiative than the rest of their colleagues in reporting on the Thursday dialog....