Heritage Foundation leader has long received spiritual guidance from group and his policy goals align with its teachings

Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation president and the architect of Project 2025, the conservative thinktank’s road map for a second Trump presidency, has close ties and receives regular spiritual guidance from an Opus Dei-led center in Washington DC, a hub of activity for the radical and secretive Catholic group.

Roberts acknowledged in a speech last September that – for years – he has visited the Catholic Information Center, a K Street institution headed by an Opus Dei priest and incorporated by the archdiocese of Washington, on a weekly basis for mass and “formation”, or religious guidance. Opus Dei also organizes monthly retreats at the CIC.

Continue reading...

Sounkamba Sylla reportedly reaches compromise after France’s strict laws on secularism threatened to bar her

A French sprinter is expected to swap her headscarf for a cap in order to participate in the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics, in a compromise reportedly struck after the country’s strict laws on secularism threatened to bar her from the event.

Earlier this week Sounkamba Sylla, a Muslim member of France’s 400m women’s and mixed relay teams, said she would not be able to take part in Friday’s ceremony because she wears a hijab.

Continue reading...

State law let the agency refuse to work with the Rutan-Rams – which would be more common with the conservative plan were implemented

In 2021, Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram decided to take the next step toward growing their family and applied to foster a child. After identifying a three-year-old in Florida who they hoped to ultimately adopt, the Rutan-Rams turned back to their home state of Tennessee to start training to become foster parents.

But their plans quickly fell apart when the Christian state-funded foster care placement agency informed them by email that they “only provide adoption services to prospective adoptive families that share our belief system”. The Rutan-Rams, who are Jewish, were out of luck.

Continue reading...

This David Puttnam-produced parable of patriotism, faith and meritocratic success – rereleased in honour of the 1924 event – is on the level of classic Hollywood

In honour of both the imminent Paris Olympics and the centenary of the 1924 Olympics, also in Paris, here is a rerelease of this superbly watchable true-story parable of patriotism, faith and meritocratic success within the system, much admired by Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden . It was produced by David Puttnam, who had discovered the story of the devout Christian athlete Eric Liddell refusing to run on Sunday and commissioned a terrifically punchy and sympathetic script from Colin Welland (whose victorious Oscar night cry of “the British are coming!” was destined to be endlessly and ironically re-quoted at moments of British failure and disappointment in Hollywood). It was Welland who incorporated Jewish sprinter Harold Abrahams into the film (as well as another gold medallist, Douglas Lowe, who refused any involvement and had to be written out).

The film was directed with gusto by first-time director and former adman Hugh Hudson, an Old Etonian who had a real feeling for how the establishment preens itself. The British Olympic team’s ecstatic barefoot training run on Broadstairs beach is accompanied by the instantly iconic, daringly non-period and trance-inducing synth score by Vangelis, hilariously spoofed by Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean in the London 2012 opening ceremony. And watching the credits again, you might jump at that name just behind Welland and Hudson: young producer Dodi Fayed, given prominence in exchange for cash from his father Mohamed , whose own establishment yearnings were as painful as anything on screen.

Continue reading...

Gregory Aymond blames three predecessors as memo says he socialized or lived with 48 allegedly abusive clergymen

The Roman Catholic archbishop of New Orleans has said the allegations at the heart of a child-sex trafficking investigation being conducted by state police against his archdiocese are a “sin”, “evil” and a crime – but he has insisted he was oblivious to them when they unfolded during a bygone era earlier in his career.

Gregory Aymond’s comments, in an interview published on Sunday by New Orleans’ Times-Picayune newspaper, were his first about an investigation which erupted into public view in April as Louisiana state troopers served the archdiocese’s headquarters with a search warrant that accused the institution of potentially having run a child-sex trafficking ring responsible for “widespread sexual abuse of minors dating back decades”.

Continue reading...

At least eight people have accused Anthony Odiong of abusing his position for sexual coercion

Two women let Roman Catholic priest Anthony Odiong become close to them because they believed he would provide them with spiritual advice they could use to confront difficult times in their lives.

But rather than simply minister to them, Odiong abused his position to have sexual intercourse with one of the women, police now allege. And he allegedly managed to pressure the other woman into letting her husband sodomize her despite her faith-based objections to that kind of encounter – while also successfully urging her to relay her experience to him.

Continue reading...

Itamar Ben-Gvir, who seeks to disrupt ceasefire talks, makes video at contested holy site in Jerusalem

Israel’s extremist national security minister has visited the holiest Muslim site in Jerusalem, recording a video saying he went to pray, in a provocative move as he seeks to disrupt ceasefire talks.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist and champion of the settler movement, recorded footage at al-Aqsa mosque compound, also known as the Temple Mount, a site holy to Muslims and Jews.

Continue reading...

Itamar Ben-Gvir, who seeks to disrupt ceasefire talks, makes video at al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem

Israel’s extremist national security minister has visited the holiest Muslim site in Jerusalem, recording a video saying he went to pray, in a provocative move as he seeks to disrupt ceasefire talks.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist and champion of the settler movement, recorded footage at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, also known as the Temple Mount, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews.

Continue reading...

Two-fifths of infantry graduate officer cadets now come from section of Israeli society aligned with far-right parties and settler movement

Israel’s army, for much of its seven decades the country’s pre-eminent secular institution, is increasingly coming under the sway of a national religious movement that has made bold moves across Israeli society in recent years.

About 40% of those graduating from the army’s infantry officer schools now come from a national religious community that accounts for 12 to 14% of Jewish Israeli society and is politically more aligned with Israel’s right and far-right political parties and the settler movement. Critics charge that its growing influence – including from the more orthodox portion known as Hardalim – is pursuing its own agenda within the army.

Continue reading...