The police officer who died after taking the place of a hostage in France was a practising Catholic who had “experienced a genuine conversion” around 2008.

Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame died on March 24 after volunteering to replace a female hostage during a terrorist attack on the Super U supermarket in Trèbes, southern France, on March 23.

Beltrame left his phone on so that police could hear his conversations with the gunman.

He was shot in the neck by jihadist Radouane Lakdim before police entered the supermarket and killed the Moroccan born French national.

Pope Francis has paid tribute to Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame who has become a hero to the French and a symbol of selfless service inspired by his patriotism and Christian faith.

Beltrame served in Iraq in 2005 and received the Legion of Honour, France’s highest award, in 2012. Last year he was named deputy commander of anti-terror police in the Aude region.

Fr Dominique Arz, national chaplain of the gendarmerie told the French Catholic magazine FamilleChrétienne: “It turns out that the lieutenant-colonel was a practising Catholic. The fact is that he did not hide his faith, and that he radiated it, he bore witness to it. We can say that his act of self-offering is consistent with what he believed. He served his country to the very end, and bore witness to his faith to the very end.”

The website Rorate Caeli compared Beltrame’s sacrifice to that of St Maximilian Kolbe, who died in 1941 after volunteering to take the place of a fellow prisoner condemned to death at Auschwitz.
Beltrame and his fiancée, Marielle, were preparing to receive the sacrament of marriage, according to Fr Jean-Baptiste, one of the Canons Regular of the Mother of God of Lagrasse Abbey.

Despite the chill and gusts of wind in St Peter’s Square, Pope Francis welcomed the beginning of spring with an impromptu lesson about gardening and how to grow into being better Christians.

“Does a tree or plant that is diseased bloom well? No! Does a tree or a plant that isn’t watered … bloom well? No. And does a tree or plant with no roots bloom?” he said before delivering his general audience talk March 21.

Christians can learn from what makes spring flowers flourish, the Pope said, because for Christians, their root is Jesus and the water that replenishes those roots are the sacraments and prayer, which makes lives bloom with Christian virtues and good works.

“I wish that this spring would be for you a spring in bloom” and an Easter that blossoms, he said. Offering a saying that is well-known in Argentina, the Pope said.

The Pope said receiving Communion can be done standing “with devotion” or kneeling, whichever has been determined by each bishops’ conference, and Communion can be received on the tongue or, “where it is permitted,” in the hand.

A mosque in Sweden that has requested the use of loudspeakers to call Muslims to prayer has ignited a firestorm, with right-leaning groups saying this should be banned while a Jewish leader has come out in defence of religious freedom. Mosques in Europe generally avoid broadcasting the call to prayer for fear of stoking Islamophobic sentiments but one in the town of Vaxjo in southern Sweden has requested the right to do so on March 21, The New Arab reports.

“It’s not like there are thousands of mosques asking for calls to prayer in Sweden,” said Aron Verstandig of the Stockholm Jewish Community group. “It’s only one that asked recently and this thing came up, so the whole thing is being exaggerated.”

Local media reported that the leader of the country’s Christian Democratic Party had ordered politicians in the region to vote against the proposal.

However, Verstandig likened this response to the hysteria that greeted Jewish immigrants in Sweden over 200 years ago when they brought their religious practices with them.

He expressed concern it could “damage integration in the country” at a time of rising Islamophobia in the Western world, symbolized by US President Donald Trump’s recent crackdown on immigrants and fuelled in part by the recent refugee crisis in Europe.

Following news of his suspension, Mr Sire responded saying that the action was ‘wholly illegal’ – an assertion the order disputes.

The writer of a highly critical book on Pope Francis is facing disciplinary action from the Order of Malta which could lead to his expulsion from the knights.

Henry Sire, author of “The Dictator Pope,” has been suspe-nded from the order while a committee investigates the matter.

A spokeswoman for the order explained that Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre, the Lieutenant of the Grand Master, has set up a body to look at “disciplinary sanctions” against Mr Sire whose book presents Francis as an “authoritarian, manipulative, and politically partisan pontiff.”

Sire writes that when the cameras aren’t rolling, the Pope is “arrogant, standoffish with people, vulgar in his language and famous for his violent outbursts of anger that are known to all, from cardinals to car drivers.”

The spokeswoman said: “I can confirm that the disciplinary procedure was agreed together with the Grand Commander who is Henry Sire’s religious superior. A motuproprio decree was issued by the Lieutenant of the Grand Master, Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre, who also nominated a committee tasked with investi-gating the matter and – in case – putting forward disciplinary sanctions.

If Catholic morality in the past seemed so obsessed with preventing sexual sin that it ignored sins of injustice, today “we have gone to the opposite extreme,” seemingly concerned only with how people treat others, not with how they treat the gift of their bodies, the papal preacher said.

“In the past, morality empha-sised the sins of the flesh so unila-terally that it led to real neuroses at times, to the detriment of concern for the duties toward our neighbour and to the detriment of the virtue of purity itself,” Capu-chin Father Raniero Cantalame-ssa told Pope Francis and members of the Roman Curia.

On the March 23 of Lent and Advent, Father Cantalamessa leads reflections for the Pope and his aides in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel of the Apostolic Palace. For the final Lenten meditation of 2018, he spoke on March 23 about the virtue of purity.

“Every day, people tend to contrast sins against purity with sins against a neighbour and to consider just the sin against a neighbour a real sin,” he said.

But the two go together, the Capuchin insisted. “Purity and love of neighbour represent dominion over self and the gift of self to others. How can I give myself if I do not possess myself but am a slave to my passions?

“It inevitably ends in using brothers and sisters, just as one uses one’s body. Those who cannot say ‘no’ to themselves cannot say ‘yes’ to brothers and sisters.” But today, “we live in a society, in terms of morals, that has fallen back into full-blown paganism and full-blown idolatry of sex,” the 83-year-old preacher told the Pope and Curia officials.

Exactly 38 years after Salva-doran Archbishop Oscar Romero was killed by a sniper’s bullet during Mass at a cancer hospital, his country’s embassy in Belgium screened a documentary about the cleric’s life on March 24.

Called Desagravio (The Reparation), it highlighted the main achievements of the campaigner for social justice, his 25 years of pastoral service to the diocese of San Miguel, and his untimely murder, telesurf.net reports.

The documentary, co-directed by Patrick Soergel from Switzer-land and Italy’s Gianni Beretta, starts with Romero’s birth in Ciudad Barrios, El Salvador, in August 1917 and concludes with his assassination.

He died in 1980, the year the country embarked on a 12-year civil war, prompting what sources from the Archdiocese of El Salvador called seven years of “pastoral famine.” They described him as “a voice for the voice-less.”

Romero was reportedly killed by forces unhappy with his outbursts against the military government. One day before he was shot, he addressed local soldiers and implored them to “stop the repression” against rural people.

Costa Rican pastor takes presidential poll lead Fabricio Alvarado leapfrogs rivals after tapping fierce opposition to gay marriage Fabricio Alvarado: ‘This is an intense shout for values the sovereignty of the family as the fundamental base of society.’

A previously obscure Costa Rican evangelical pastor has dealt the latest anti-establishment electoral upset from a political outsider, jumping from last place to a first-round victory in the Central American country after tapping into opposition to gay marriage. Fabricio Alvarado secured 24.9% of the vote with 93% of the ballots counted. He was leading Carlos Alvarado (no relation) from the ruling Citizens’ Action party on 21.7% who overtook Antonio Álvarez, a banana entrepreneur, who had held an early second place. His victory was well short of the 40% needed to avoid a run-off.

Poland’s leading archbishop on March 18 deplored comments by a senior conservative priest who had wished Pope Francis a quick death if he does not open to “wisdom.”

Abp Marek Jedraszewski of Krakow said he heard about the comments with “great pain and regret” and has discussed them face-to-face with Monsignor Edward Staniek, who made them in a February 25 church speech in Krakow.

Krakow was the seat of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the late Pope St John Paul II. Poland’s Church remains attached to John Paul’s conservative stance, which largely differs from Francis’ inclusive message. A majority of Poland’s bishops see their mission as preserving the traditional Catholic values from the pressure of secularization.

In his speech, Father Staniek, a prominent theologian, said he was praying for wisdom for Francis and a “heart open to the Holy Spirit, and if he does not do that, for a quick passage to the House of the Father,” meaning death.

He said that Francis has departed from the teaching of Jesus and was wrongly interpreting mercy as opening up to Muslims and allowing communion for divorced Catholics, who, according to the Church, live in mortal sin and are not allowed communion.