Fr Gabriele Amorth said that when the Pope blessed the men they “flew three metres backwards” and “howled no longer”.

In extracts from a new book, published yesterday by Panorama magazine in Italy, Fr Amorth explained that incident occurred when the men, known only as Giovanni and Marco, attended a general audience.

When the Pope appeared, Fr Amorth said, according to AFP: “The two possessed men fell to the floor and banged their heads on the ground. The Swiss guards watched but did nothing; perhaps they have seen how the possessed react when faced by the Pope before?

“The Pope began to wave to the crowd and Giovanni and Marco started to howl, drool, shake and fly into a rage.

“The possessed were then hit by a wild jolt, their whole bodies were hit. They flew three metres backwards … and howled no longer.”

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi denied that the Pope had performed an exorcism.

“Even if the facts are true, it’s not correct to talk about an exorcism by the Pope, who was not warned or aware of their presence,” he said.

Fr Amorth made a similar claim about Blessed Pope John Paul II. In 2000, he said that the late pope performed an impromptu exorcism on a a teenage girl at the end of an audience in St Peter’s Square. The Vatican’s press office declined to comment on the claim at the time.

In a written response to the Welsh government’s White Paper on Organ and Tissue Donation, leaders of the Catholic Church in Wales said: “Our main concern is that the positive ethos of donation as a free gift is being endangered by an ill-judged if well-intentioned proposal to move from voluntary donation to presumed consent.”

They urged the Welsh government “to revisit the process and establish a cross-party committee that could consider all the evidence submitted to the previous enquiries of the last three years”.

Archbishop George Stack of Cardiff has previously expressed serious reservations about the ethics underpinning a system in which the deceased’s organs are automatically donated unless they choose to opt out in advance.

The Church’s written submission is co-authored with the Church in Wales and the Wales Orthodox Mission.

The submission states: “If organs may be taken without consent, this is no longer ‘donation’. This is not just a health matter but concerns serious human rights issues such as personal autonomy, as well as questions about the relationship of the state and the citizen.

“At the same time the belief that presumed consent would itself increase the number of organs available for transplantation is not supported by the available evidence.”

The Sisters, who have run a nursing home at the hall for 50 years, have applied to Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council for Listed Building Consent to remove the embedded marbles from their Lancashire home, which are deteriorating due to climatic conditions.

The application before its planning committee is to remove, conserve and replicate these artefacts with the aim of selling them to a public buyer.

Any funds raised will be used to renovate two listed buildings in the grounds – the Old Hall and the Stable Block – which are near the top of the Heritage At Risk Register, and are used to provide nursing care.

Initially English Heritage gave its support to the application, but then imposed conditions, to which the Sisters have agreed. However, English Heritage has now refused the application.

The Sisters bought Ince Blundell Hall in 1959, and converted the house into a nursing home.  The hall had been the ancestral home of the Blundell family, and still housed a collection of 600 Roman and Greek marbles acquired by Henry Blundell during the 18th century.

In 1959, the Weld-Blundell family and the Sisters arranged for Liverpool Museum to take the marbles, and the museum removed 500 pieces between 1959 and 1961. About 70 bass reliefs embedded in the walls of the buildings were left behind with a few minor pieces in the grounds, most of which have since been stolen.

A spokesman for the order said: “The Sisters are fully aware of the significance of the remaining heritage items and have done their best to preserve and protect them. They are distressed to witness the progressive deterioration of the artefacts from a combination of vandalism, theft, pollution and extremes of climate.

“The reliefs are now in danger of deteriorating to the point that it will no longer be possible to conserve them. Those on the outside of the Pantheon are crumbling and their condition is so poor that they ‘sugar’ on touch.”

In July 2011, English Heritage commented that the Sisters had been “excellent custodians” of the Hall: “It is evident that the Sisters have successfully utilised the building as a nursing home whilst still retaining its character and heritage. Ince Blundell is still a fine historic house and the Sisters have proved themselves to be excellent custodians. English Heritage is reassured by that.”

The Sisters say they intend to continue with the application.

Bishop Bernard Fellay, the superior general of the Society of St Pius X, has said that “even if we are fighting with Rome, we are still, so to say, with Rome“.

The US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi has dismissed “with prejudice” a lawsuit filed against the Holy See by insurance commissioners in five states.

Robert McClory profiles Michael Ryan, an American security specialist who has fought tirelessly to increase financial transparency in the Church.

Francis Beckwith defines the “new anti-Catholicism” as an effort “to employ the coercive power of the state to force the Church’s institutions to violate the Church’s own moral theology”.

And the BBC has produced a new documentary series that “goes behind the headlines to explore what it is like to be Catholic today”.

This week, Fr Tim Gardner OP suggests two simple steps to renew our schools; Marie Collins, a clerical abuse victim, tells Madeleine Teahan what she will say to the world’s bishops in Rome next week; Peter Stanford celebrates Cafod’s 50th birthday; Piers Paul Read examines who was to blame for the Dreyfus Affair; and Caroline Farrow calls for a new movement of pro-life feminism.

You can read it all online by subscribing here. Or, for a hard copy, go here.

The dying woman has begged her parents for help but they turn away, too afraid of contracting the disease and too ashamed that their daughter carries it. If they adopt their grandson, the villagers would ostracise the family so much that they would not even be allowed to use the local well for water. They fear threats and intimidation. They fear being burned out of their own home.

The only peace that the dying woman can salvage is the knowledge that someone will take care of her baby when she is gone.

Fr Michael Shea says that when he faced his first young mother dying from Aids he made her a promise that he was unprepared for.

“I did not feel confident at all,” he recalls. “But it was just, you know, you have someone who is dying and has nobody. But I was confident that somehow I would be able to find people to help me to help them. So that was pretty much just how it worked out. It was desperation. I did not have a plan or any idea what I was getting in to.” He starts to laugh and continues: “I don’t know if I would have done it if I had known what I know now. It sort of exploded on me.”

Fr Michael was raised on a farm in Wisconsin in the United States and arrived in Thailand in February 1966, aged 28. A newly ordained Redemptorist priest who struggled with the language, Fr Mike disliked the food and felt incredibly homesick. “It was a rough beginning,” he admits.

A country boy at heart, Fr Michael was not at all keen when after over 30 years of missionary work across rural Thailand he was offered a transfer to the Thai capital Bangkok by his local bishop. Fr Michael insisted that he would find more solace in rural Thailand supporting men and women suffering with Aids than in the bustling metropolis inhabited by 15 million people. Although he had only been exposed to Aids sufferers a year before, it was his new-found devotion that would lead to the creation of six new homes for Thai children orphaned by the disease. These homes enabled Fr Michael to make that precious promise over and over again to dying mothers.

“I didn’t think it was gonna wind up to be anything, you know,” Fr Michael says in his distinctive Wisconsin accent. “But they just kept coming. It got really big really fast.”

With six houses scattered across the region, the project employs 50 people who work as farmers, administrators and cooks in support of the different houses. Philanthropic projects can often focus on one particular age bracket, sex or condition. But Fr Michael’s homes open their doors to orphans with and without Aids from birth and they remain open throughout the child’s upbringing.

Fr Michael tells me that a lack of education in Thailand concerning Aids has inflamed prejudices, leading to stigma and abandonment. For a man with indiscriminate compassion, he describes himself as, “kind of judgmental”, but he “learned real fast that these people needed respect, help, compassion”.

He explains that, since anti-retroviral drugs have been available in the last six years, not one child has been born with Aids where the drugs have been administered appropriately to pregnant women and their babies. He does add, ruefully, that the medication “is really hard on their little livers”.

I feel apprehensive about my next question. It is one that he has probably grown sick of given the media’s infatuation with the Church’s position on condoms. But before I even finish my sentence, Fr Michael chimes in: “We have a Redemptorist bishop in South Africa, Kevin Dowling, who supported the use of prophylactics to prevent Aids from crossing to the unaffected partner. People say prophylactics don’t work and that’s not true. They do work. But then Rome came out and said couples couldn’t use them.”

He adds approvingly: “Bishop Dowling wrote a blistering open letter to his fellow bishops in Rome saying: ‘What are you talking about? You are just condemning people to death”.

Although Fr Michael’s views do not completely accord with Rome’s there can be no doubt that his work has saved lives. He tells me that abortion is readily available in Thailand but his outreach projects means that doctors and nurses have refused to assist in abortions until the mother had gone to see him first.

Fr Michael’s voice betrays a lump in the throat when I ask what the saddest moments have been during his ministry.

“Every time a child dies,” he replies. “When a child dies that’s really, really rough. A child is dying, we’ve been kicked out of hospitals and we have brought them home to die.

“They’re still dying,” he adds wearily. “Last year we lost two. It really hurts you and you see little kids and their friends who are improving and other kids who are just slipping slowly down the ladder. Their kidneys fail and their livers begin to fail. Watching them is a terrible feeling because you can’t help them and all you can do is be there for the child and hold them at the end. That’s the roughest part.”

But what about the obvious question? Where is Fr Michael’s loving God when an innocent child dies of Aids in his arms?

“It’s not God’s fault, it’s the fault of the system,” he says. “Diseases mutate and that’s a natural thing in a flawed world. Terrible things happen to good people.”

I am now used to his pauses, which mean he is thinking and not that he has concluded his answer. He promptly continues with typical frankness: “You know, I remember talking to this guy with lung cancer and he said: ‘Why did God do this to me and not anybody else?’ I said: ‘How many cigarettes did you smoke a day?’ He said: ‘I smoke three or four packs a day.’ I replied: ‘And you’re blaming God?’”

It is hard to envisage practically how Fr Michael manages to interact with so many children spread across six different houses. It is hard to envisage the interaction between orphans who have Aids and orphans that don’t but he insists that they play together without prejudice or segregation.

He concedes that it’s difficult to see the children every night and, due to other priestly duties, he cannot be with them before school. But he makes a special effort to visit in the evenings when he can. But his weekends are wholly dedicated to taking the children out and entertaining them. “We got kids here who came in who were unable to eat because they had thrush so bad from the Aids virus and they’re at high school now. We got kids that came in so traumatised by what happened to them that they wouldn’t communicate and one of those girls is going into college next May.

“To have a kid who was once so traumatised and then they come running up to you and they’re just like everybody else. It makes you feel good. But I am always wary about feel-good stuff because then you start congratulating yourself, which sucks big time.”

When I ask him how he remembers all their names he replies dryly: “They don’t all come at once.” With a laugh he adds: “Sometimes I go over to visit, see a kid and I say: ‘Who the hell is that?’ because they grow like reeds. A little girl will come up and she’s tall, slim 15 and you can’t believe it. You’ve got a young guy talking and his voice is breaking every other word you know and you realise…”

His voice trails off and he says pensively: “I think I am blessed.”

Fr Michael Shea who is supported through the Thai Children’s Trust UK, urgently needs help to grow crops to feed his flock. To find out more or to donate visit here.

The objects being put up for sale include church plate, chalices – including a Charles I chalice made in 1633 and an Arts and Crafts chalice worth £13,000 to £15,000 – as well as reliquaries and a 19th-century monstrance.

The treasures are being sold by Dominic Winter auctioneers after the remaining Benedictine monks at the abbey decided to move to a smaller friary in Chilworth, near Farnham in Surrey.

Priestly bloggers Fr Mildew and Fr Ray Blake have criticised the sale, saying more effort should have been made to keep the holy objects for use in liturgy.

Fr Blake, parish priest at St Mary Magdalene, Brighton, said that St Michael’s Abbey at Farnborough, Hampshire – another Benedictine monastery – were considering trying to acquire “as many of these items as possible”.

A spokesman for the abbey declined to comment.

Fr Blake wrote: “I only hope and pray that these sacred objects are bought and restored to the holy use for which they were intended. However, their fate is more likely to become part of some decorative scheme or possibly even to be used for a sacrilegious purpose.”

A spokesman for Dominic Winter said that all of the religious objects had been deconsecrated. The auction will be held on Wednesday and Thursday next week.

St Augustine’s Abbey in Ramsgate, designed by A W Pugin, was the first monastery to be built in England since the Reformation. It was founded in 1856. The 11 Benedictines voted to leave in 2009 and bought the Franciscan friary in Chilworth in 2010.

Although Aquinas had little knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, as a theologian he was unrivalled in intellectual power, capable of dictating to four secretaries at the same time.

Yet he showed absolute single-mindedness in pursuing his fundamental aim: to use Aristotelian methods of scientific rationalism to support the doctrines of Christian faith and revelation.

The son of the count of Aquino, which lies on the ancient border of the papal states, mid-way between Rome and Naples, Thomas could claim kinship with the kings of Aragon, Castile and France, as well as with the Emperors Henry VI and Frederick II.

When, at 19, he joined the mendicant Dominicans his family was so shocked that his military brothers kidnapped him. Released after a
year, Thomas studied in Paris and Cologne. A contemporary described him as “tall, erect, large and well-built, with a complexion like white wheat, and a head which early grew bald”.

“We call this man a dumb ox,” said his teacher St Albert, “but his bellowing in doctrine will one day resound throughout the world.” Yet Aquinas the man always remained modest and unassuming, as rich in spirit as in mind.

From 1252 he taught in Paris. There is a story of him dining at the court of Louis IX (St Louis) and passing the meal sunk in abstraction while the social butterflies gossiped around him. Then suddenly Thomas concluded his lucubrations, brought his great fist crashing down upon the table, and declared: “That will settle the Manicheees.”

In 1259 his superiors sent Aquinas back to Italy, where he remained for 10 years, organising Dominican schools, and teaching in Anagni, Orvieto, Rome and Viterbo.

Around 1266 Aquinas began his Summa Theologica, the systematic expression of his mature thought. Although he never finished this work it became over the centuries, pace the Scotists, the bedrock of Catholic orthodoxy.

From 1269 to 1272 Aquinas was again in Paris, before being recalled to Naples. There, in 1273, he experienced a vision of such intensity that he abandoned writing.

“All I have composed,” he said, “seems to me like so much straw compared with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.”

Summoned to the Council of Lyon in 1274, Aquinas died at Fossa Nuova, south of Rome. Let G K Chesterton conclude his mortal history: “He confessed his sins and he received his God; and we may be sure that the great philosopher had entirely forgotten philosophy. The confessor ran forth as if in fear, and whispered that his confession had been that of a child of five.”

Divine Office Week IV

Sunday, January 29: Fourth Sunday in
Ordinary Time
Deut 18:15-20; 1 Cor 7:32-35; Mk 1:21-28
Monday, January 30: Weekday in
Ordinary Time
2 Sm 15:13-14, 30; 16:5-13; Ps 3; Mk 5:1-20
Tuesday, January 31: St John Bosco
2 Sm 18:9-10, 14b, 24-25a, 30; 19:3; Ps 86; Mk 5:21-43
Wednesday, February 1: Weekday in
Ordinary Time
2 Sm 24:2, 9-17; Ps 32; Mk 6:1-6
Thursday, February 2: The Presentation of the Lord
Mal 3:1-4; Ps 24; Heb 2:14-18; Lk 2:22-40 or Lk 2:22-32
Friday, February 3: Weekday in
Ordinary Time or St Blaise; St Ansgar
Sir 47:2-11; Ps 18; Mk 6:14-29
Saturday, February 4: Weekday in Ordinary Time
1 Kgs 3:4-13; Ps 119; Mk 6:30-34

Extraordinary Form

Sunday, January 29: Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 8:23-27
Monday, January 30: St Martina, virgin and martyr
Ecclesiasticus 51:1-8,12; Matthew 25:1-13
Tuesday, January 31: St John Bosco, confessor
Philippians 4:4-9; Matthew 18
Wednesday, February 1: St Ignatius, bishop and martyr
Romans 8:35-39; John 12:24-26
Thursday, February 2: Purification of Our Lady
Malachy 3:1-4; Luke 2:22-32
Friday, February 3: Feria
Readings of Fourth Sunday after Epiphany repeated
Saturday, February 4: St Andrew Corsini, bishop and confessor
Ecclesiasticus 44:16-45:20; Matthew 25:14-23

Compiled by Gordon Dimon, Senior MC of the Latin Mass Society

Ancient superstitious practices, laughable to a scientific age, cannot be entirely dismissed. Each and every age longs for a voice, a revelation that will speak to the heart, thereby guaranteeing the future.

Through Moses the God of Israel gave such voice to his people, a voice that named them as his very own, that it gathered them together in a covenant of love. Moses took the promise further. He promised that the Lord would raise up for Israel a prophet like himself, a prophet that would speak to God face to face, as to a friend. That promise was unfulfilled at the death of Moses. The Book of Deuteronomy is concluded with unfulfilled expectation. “Since then, never has there been a prophet in Israel like Moses, the man the Lord knew face to face.”

The gospels reveal Jesus as the fulfilment of this expectation for a prophet like unto Moses. They had longed for a prophet raised up from among their brothers. Through the incarnation the Son of God became their brother, like unto them in all things but sin. They had longed for a prophet, who, like Moses, spoke to God as to a friend, face to face. As Son of God, Jesus shared with his people the intimacy of the Father.

The early chapters of the gospels spell out in action a dawning awareness of Christ’s significance. Like many before him, he taught in their synagogues, but here was teaching with a difference. “His teaching made a deep impression on them because, unlike the scribes, he taught them with authority.”

The authority for which they longed was not the authority of power, but an authority that comes from the heart. They longed for words that instinctively acknowledged the truth of their broken lives, and yet, at the same time, promised hope and redemption.

They witnessed, as in today’s Gospel, the deliverance of those possessed by unclean spirits. The more they witnessed such wonders, the more they began to acknowledge the saving Presence that had come into their lives. “Here is a teaching that is new and with authority behind it: he gives orders even to unclean spirits and they obey him.” The crowd’s reaction to Jesus leads us to reflect on our own lives. Like them, we are searching for meaning and purpose. Today, as in the day of Moses, there are many false prophets. They promise salvation through health and beauty, prosperity and celebrity. The list is endless and disappointing, and yet we continue to give ourselves to false hopes and dreams. Let us acknowledge Jesus, embracing in him the promise made through Moses.

Here is a prophet raised up from among ourselves, who leads us to the Father, the source of all knowledge and life. He speaks with authority, the power to change broken lives. He alone heals broken lives. Every other hope is sorcery by a different name.