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Vatican City, Jan 13, 2017 / 02:28 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Two arrests have been made in a widespread cyber-attack that compromised communications of prominent Italian institutions and individuals, including the Vatican.

Italian police have arrested Giulio Occhionero, 45, and his sister Francesca Maria Occhionero, 49. The siblings, who also work as engineers and have dual residencies in London and Rome, are accused of illegally accessing classified information, and breaching and intercepting information technology systems and data communications.

The attack reportedly hacked as many as 18,000 accounts, including computers used by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi at the Pontifical Council for Culture, computers at a Vatican guest house regularly used by prelates visiting Rome, and thousands of e-mail messages.

Vatican officials have not yet commented on the attack, and it is yet unknown to what extent sensitive Vatican information may have been compromised.

According to Italian authorities, the illegally accessed information was stored on servers in the United States, leading to an ongoing investigation with the assistance of the FBI’s cyberdivision.

Authorities suspect the Occhioneros may have ties to the Freemasons, because the malware used in the hack was called “Eye Pyramid,” believed to be a reference to the all-seeing eye of God, or Eye of Providence, a symbol typically associated with Freemasonry. Several of the compromised accounts belonged to Mason members.

Whether or not there are ties to the Masons, cyber security experts believe it is highly unlikely that the sibling pair acted alone.

Raffaele Marchetti, coordinator of the digital revolution and cybersecurity courses at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, told the New York Times that the information gathered was likely of interest to another party.

“That kind of information is useless unless you have an institutional or financial contact that has some interest in having it,” Mr. Marchetti said.

“Them, alone, isolated without contacts is an unreasonable story. We should expect more worrying information to emerge, who actually took advantage of this information and who backed, supported or gave coverage to these operations.”

The Occhioneros appeared before a judge in Rome on Wednesday, but have denied involvement in the attack. 

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Vatican City, Jan 13, 2017 / 03:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In his homily on Friday morning, Pope Francis commented on the Gospel story of the paralytic lowered through the roof, saying that stagnant faith breeds unkindness while authentic faith takes risks to be closer to Jesus.

Searching for Christ “isn’t easy, but it’s wonderful! And it’s always a risk,” the Pope said. When we ask Jesus for healing or the answer to a problem, he said, Christ goes even further, healing the spirit and offering the forgiveness of sins.

During Mass at the Chapel of Santa Marta, the Pope spoke about the men in the Gospel who created a hole in the roof, lifting down a paralytic man to where Jesus was teaching, so he could be close to Jesus and ask him for healing.

Speaking out against the spectators who didn't follow Jesus, but who stayed in their place, Francis warned against the danger of growing into clericalism. It is the judgmental who see the simple-hearted and judge them for unknown or even impure intentions, he said.

“Those who didn’t move…and watched. They were sitting down…watching from the balcony. Their life was not a journey: their life was a balcony! From there they never took risks. They just judged.”

What is important, the Pope emphasized, is to follow Jesus, even with imperfect intentions. Searching for Jesus imperfectly still contains the desire for the forgiveness of sins.

When Jesus hid away after crowds wanted to make him into a king to rule politically, he still allowed them to follow. The danger is staying in place and not seeking Jesus, Francis said, stressing that those who have faith are unconcerned with looking ridiculous and like sinners.

Just as the men who lowered the paralytic had risked a legal case with the owner of the house, and the woman who touched Christ's cloak in a crowd had risked public ridicule, Pope Francis noted that following Christ can create risk and fear in our own lives.

He ended the homily encouraging his listeners to consider these questions, and to think about what holds them back from taking risks.

“Do I entrust my life to Jesus? Am I walking behind Jesus even if sometimes I seem ridiculous? Or am I sitting still, watching what others are doing?”

 

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Washington D.C., Jan 13, 2017 / 05:06 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- William Peter Blatty, whose fictionalized vision of demonic possession and Catholic exorcism transfixed a great swath of the American public, died on Thursday.

In the 1960s he became a novelist and screenwriter, with only modest success. But then his 1971 novel The Exorcist portrayed the demonic possession of a 12-year-old girl and her exorcism by two Catholic priests. He had drawn inspiration from a 1949 Washington Post story about a Jesuit priest’s successful exorcism of a 14-year-old boy in Mount Ranier, Maryland.

For Blatty, the point of his the story was “that God exists and the universe itself will have a happy ending.”

The book sold 13 million copies. Blatty wrote the screenplay for the movie, which became a blockbuster whose disturbing imagery and depiction of supernatural evil helped redefine the horror genre and the American religious imagination.

Blatty voiced concern that the film’s climax, in which the younger priest goads the demon into possessing him and then jumps to his death, appeared to give victory to the demon.

In 2000 he prevailed upon his friend, the film’s director William Friedkin, to release a special director’s cut of the film that made the triumph of good over evil more explicit, the New York Times reports.

Blatty graduated from Georgetown University in 1950, and parts of the campus were used to film The Exorcist. He received its John Carroll Medal for alumni achievement.

However, he became a leading critic of the school. In May 2012, he announced a canonical lawsuit against Georgetown for failing to live up to its Catholic identity.

He formed the Father King Society, a group named for the late Jesuit Fr. Thomas M. King, a former theology professor at Georgetown who was rumored to be the inspiration for the priestly character in The Exorcist.

The writer voiced gratitude for his education, but lamented “that Georgetown University today almost seems to take pride in insulting the Church and offending the faithful.” The Father King Society website listed various ways it believed the university failed to comply with Ex corde Ecclesiae, St. John Paul II’s 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic universities.

Blatty’s petition asked that the Church require the prestigious, historically Jesuit school to implement the document.

In April 2014, Archbishop Angelo Zani, Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, said the group’s petition was “a well-founded complaint.”

Blatty was born Jan. 7, 1928 in Manhattan to Lebanese immigrants. His father left home when he was six years old and his mother supported them both on a meager income. He attended the now-closed Brooklyn Preparatory School and Georgetown on full scholarships.

Before becoming a screenwriter, he worked as a vacuum cleaner salesman, a psychological warfare specialist in the Air Force, a magazine editor for the U.S. Information Agency, and a university public relations specialist, the Washington Post reports.

Blatty married four times and had eight children.

He passed away Jan. 12 at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. at the age of 89.

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Lucas Jackson, Reuters

By Rhina Guidos

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Catholic panelists gathered to discuss "Faithful Priorities in a Time of Trump" said it is difficult to get over some of the words the president-elect said during the campaign -- and even before he was a candidate. But as his presidency nears, many of them said it's important to find ways to work with him for the common good.

"When Donald Trump says things about women ... I have a hard time stomaching those comments," said Msgr. John Enzler, president and CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington. "We can still find a way, though, to listen and say, 'How do we find common ground?'"

Msgr. Enzler was one of five panelists Jan. 12 who addressed the role the Catholic faith can play as the country gets ready for the incoming Trump administration. Some Catholics such as Rep. Francis Rooney, R-Florida, expressed great optimism.

"We can have a lot of hope that he will protect life the way we want him to do ... defunding Planned Parenthood, protecting life," Rooney said. "Things like the insurance mandate can be brought into harmony of First Amendment rights."

Yet others such as panelist Jessica Chilin Hernandez expressed uncertainty and apprehension of the days ahead. Chilin works at Georgetown University's Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, thanks to a work permit she has through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA. President Barack Obama, through executive action in 2012, created a policy that allows certain undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children to have a work permit and be exempt from deportation.

Chilin is one of more than 750,000 people who signed up for DACA. During the campaign, Trump said he would kill the program and threatened mass deportations, sending those like Chilin into panic.

"I felt a fear unlike any other fear I have had before," she said about the moment she learned Trump won the election. "The fear was visceral. ... one thought that occupied my mind was that homeland security knows exactly where I live. It was hard to imagine myself having a future in 2017."

Joan Rosenhauer, executive vice president of U.S. Operations for Catholic Relief Services, said now is a good time to review the principles of Catholicism and social justice, explaining that they don't divide people and don't say refugees or immigrants are enemies or a burden on society.

"What we have to do is lift up our principles," Rosenhauer said. "The problem is deeper because our own Catholic people do not know those principles."

Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobbying organization, said the country is showing a high level of ambiguity, fear, dysfunction and chaos.

"I think that challenges all of us as people of faith," she said.

Now is the time to stand up for the stranger, the working poor, and anyone who needs of our kindness or help, and Catholic social teaching has a lot to say about it, Sister Campbell said.

Msgr. Enzler noted that it is also important to understand that individuals can do much by performing kind actions toward others. People can start by asking: "What did I do today? It's not an agency that can make things better but people," he said.

Chilin said it's important to keep in mind language that we use in daily conversation.

"Be conscientious of language," she said. "Illegal is a racial slur. No human being is illegal and yet, in many circles, they use it to describe us."

Panel moderator John Carr, director of Georgetown University's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, which sponsored the event, asked how Catholics can build bridges in "an angry country, a divided country." There are a lot of people who feel under attack, he said.

"It's important to see what role (Catholics) can play in divisions that have been created over the past year," Rosenhauer said. "I was really struck by Cardinal (Joseph) Tobin and his homily at his installation where one of his key points was that our kindness must be known to all."

It's important to stand up for beliefs even when others disagree with them, she said, "but we have to find a way to do it with kindness."

"We want to protect children in the womb. That's something we can work with this (the Trump) administration and Congress on. ... Senator (Jeff) Sessions said there would be no Muslim ban. That's something we would support and work together on ... then let's be clear about the areas for disagreements."

Msgr. Enzler said Catholics, particularly the church's leaders, must also speak and raise their voices for the vulnerable, and strongly speak the church's message.

Moderator Carr asked Sister Campbell whether she could offer any lessons about building bridges that she learned during the Nuns on the Bus tour last summer, a 19-day trip that a group of women religious undertook from Wisconsin to the national political conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia. Its aim was to learn what people around the country were thinking about just before the presidential election.

Sister Campbell used the bus as a metaphor for the country. Some said the bus had made them feel as if they were welcome back into a community, a feeling they had not had in a long time, because everyone was welcome on the bus. She said she heard stories about poverty, lack of jobs and lack of access to health care that resulted in the deaths of loved ones.

"No one can be left out of our care," Sister Campbell said. "We are a nation of problem-solvers, but we have sunk into extreme individualism."

As Pope Francis has said, it's about the people, and when people feel loved, they flourish and when they flourish so does the country, she said.

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