Mother Teresa is beatified by Pope John Paul II for her work among "the poorest of the poor" in India.

On Oct. 19, 2003, Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who died in 1997. The beatification of the Macedonia-born nun took place in Rome, and her popularity has remained strong in the months since.

The process leading up to the beatification has been the shortest in modern history. In early 1999—less than two years after Mother Teresa's death—Pope John Paul waived the normal five-year waiting period and allowed the immediate opening of her canonization cause.

In 2002, the Holy Father recognized the healing of an Indian woman as the miracle needed to beatify Mother Teresa of Calcutta. That healing occurred on the first anniversary of Mother Teresa's death. It involved a non-Christian woman in India who had a huge abdominal tumor and woke up to find the tumor gone. Members of the Missionaries of Charity prayed for their founder's intervention to help the sick woman.

"Her life of loving service to the poor has inspired many to follow the same path. Her witness and message are cherished by those of every religion as a sign that 'God still loves the world today," members of the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order she founded, said in a statement after Mother Teresa's beatification was announced.

3 Interesting Things You May Not Know About Christopher Columbus

Columbus didn’t set out to prove the earth was round.
Forget those myths perpetuated by everyone from Washington Irving to Bugs Bunny. There was no need for Columbus to debunk the flat-earthers—the ancient Greeks had already done so. As early as the sixth century B.C., the Greek mathematician Pythagoras surmised the world was round, and two centuries later Aristotle backed him up with astronomical observations. By 1492 most educated people knew the planet was not shaped like a pancake.

Columbus was likely not the first European to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
That distinction is generally given to the Norse Viking Leif Eriksson, who is believed to have landed in present-day Newfoundland around 1000 A.D., almost five centuries before Columbus set sail. Some historians even claim that Ireland’s Saint Brendan or other Celtic people crossed the Atlantic before Eriksson. While the United States commemorates Columbus—even though he never set foot on the North American mainland—with parades and a federal holiday, Leif Eriksson Day on October 9 receives little fanfare.

Nina and Pinta were not the actual names of two of Columbus’ three ships.
In 15th-century Spain, ships were traditionally named after saints. Salty sailors, however, bestowed less-than-sacred nicknames upon their vessels. Mariners dubbed one of the three ships on Columbus’s 1492 voyage the Pinta, Spanish for “the painted one” or “prostitute.” The Santa Clara, meanwhile, was nicknamed the Nina in honor of its owner, Juan Nino. Although the Santa Maria is called by its official name, its nickname was La Gallega, after the province of Galicia in which it was built.

Mexican independence day !!

Don Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo-Costilla y Gallaga Mandarte Villaseñor, more commonly known as Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla or simply Miguel Hidalgo, was a Mexican Catholic priest ,  was involved in planned revolt against the Spanish rulers of Mexico and when  he got wind of his impending  arrest, he preempted the authorities and ordered his brother to take a contingent of armed rebels and free the political prisoners being held in the city jail on the night  of September 15, 1810. The next day Hidalgo ordered the church bell to rung while he, Ignacio Allende and Juan Aldama went out in front of the church  and urged the townsfolk  to revolt.

To the north, the United States had won its independence decades before, and many Mexicans felt they could, too. In 1808, Creole patriots saw their chance when Napoleon invaded Spain and imprisoned Ferdinand VII. This allowed Mexican and South American rebels to set up their own governments and yet claim loyalty to the imprisoned Spanish King.

The "flag" of the movement  used for Hidalgo that early  morning was a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe; And the words uttered by Hidalgo  at the end of his fatefully speech has a lot of versions, but since 1910 the word of  "El grito" it's something like :

Mexicans!!
Long live  the heroes that gave us the  Fatherland!!
Long live Hidalgo!!
Long live Morelos!!
Long live Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez!!
Long live Allende!!
Long live Aldama y Matamoros!!
Long live National Independece!!
Long live Mexico!!
Long live Mexico!!
Long live Mexico!!

mary

1989 Hungary allows East Germans refugees to leave

In a dramatic break with the eastern European communist bloc, Hungary gives permission for thousands of East German refugees to leave Hungary for West Germany. It was the first time one of the Warsaw Pact nations-who were joined in the defensive alliance between Russia and its eastern Europe satellites–broke from the practice of blocking citizens of the communist nations from going to the West.

By 1989, the Soviet Union was entering a period of accelerating collapse. Economic problems were foremost in the factors causing this collapse, but political turmoil in the Soviet Union, the various Soviet Socialist Republics, and the satellite nations in eastern Europe were also responsible for the decay of what President Ronald Reagan once termed the “evil empire.” In Hungary, a movement for greater democracy and economic freedom was gaining strength. Such forces were also alive in East Germany, but the communist government of that nation proved inflexible in dealing with the demands for change. In response, thousands of East Germans–traveling as “tourists”–began pouring into Hungary. As soon as they arrived, they declared that they would not return home.

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Pope Benedict XV named to papacy

On Aug. 20, 1914, with World War I less than a month old, Pope Pius X died, and on Sept. 3, 1914, Benedict was elected pope, only four months after being created a cardinal. Crowned on Sept. 6, 1914, he possessed the diplomatic experience that the conclave had wanted. The first four years of Benedict's seven-and-a-half-year papacy were to be consumed by his ultimately unsuccessful attempts to stop a war that he condemned as "the suicide of civilized Europe."

Born Giacomo della Chiesa in Genoa 1854, the sixth child of an ancient but poor patrician family, Benedict was ordained in 1878, spent much of his life in the Vatican's diplomatic service and became undersecretary of state in 1901. In 1907, he became archbishop of Bologna.

He opened a Vatican office to reunite prisoners of war with their families, and he tried to persuade neutral Switzerland to take in any combatants who were suffering from tuberculosis. While the Vatican's bank balance was not healthy, he spent 82 million lire on relief work.

Benedict has been called "the pope of peace." In the title of John F. Pollard's biography, he is "the unknown pope." In the year that marks the centenary of the beginning of World War I, the millions dead will be remembered, the fall of dynasties discussed, and the consequences of the conflict pondered. It should be a time, too, when the heroic efforts of Benedict find a true appreciation.

Embrace divorcees, pope asks church

"These people are not excommunicated ... And they absolutely must not be treated as such. They are still part of the church,"Pope Francis said at his weekly general audience at the Vatican. Speaking ahead of a highly anticipated global meeting on family life in October, he said "awareness that a brotherly and attentive welcome ... is needed towards those who ... have established a new relationship after the failure of a marriage, has greatly increased".
The church does not recognise divorce but divorcees can still take communion unless they remarry, which is considered to be adultery.

"No closed doors! Everyone can participate some way or another in the life of the church," Francis said, in a clear call for Catholic bishops and priests to treat those in so-called "irregular situations" with greater compassion.
The issue of remarried divorcees is likely to be addressed at the upcoming synod on the family that Francis hopes will help reconcile Catholic thinking with the realities of believers' lives in the 21st century.

A first synod last year saw riled conservative bishops move to block the approval of language heralding an unprecedented opening on the treatment of divorced Catholics, who are unable to take communion.
The Argentine pontiff said the church risked alienating children by treating their parents as outcasts. "If we look at these new relationships through the eyes of young children . we see even greater the urgency of developing in our communities a real welcome towards those who are living such situations," he said.

Children, he said, "are the ones who suffer the most" from broken families.
It would be difficult to call on parents "to do everything to educate their children according to Christian values ... if we keep them at a distance from community life, as if they were excommunicated," he explained.

AFP.