Pope Francis and U.S. President Donald Trump spent 30 minutes speaking privately in the library of the Apostolic Palace on May 24, and as the president left, he told the Pope, “I won’t forget what you said.”

The atmosphere at the beginning was formal and a bit stiff. However, the mood lightened when Pope Francis met the first lady, Melania Trump, and asked if she fed her husband “potica,” a traditional cake in Slovenia, her homeland. There were smiles all around. Pope Francis gave Trump a split medallion held together by an olive tree, which his interpreter told Trump is “a symbol of peace.” Speaking in Spanish, the Pope told Trump, “I am giving you this because I hope you may be this olive tree to make peace.”

The president responded, “We can use peace.”

Pope Francis also gave the president a copy of his message for World Peace Day 2017 and told him, “I signed it personally for you.” In addition, he gave Trump copies of three of his documents: “The Joy of the Gospel”; “Amoris Laetitia,” on the family; and “Laudato Si,’” on the environment.

Knowing that Pope Francis frequently has quoted the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Trump presented Pope Francis with a large gift box containing five of the slain civil rights leader’s books, including a signed copy of “The Strength to Love.”

“I think you will enjoy them,” Trump told the Pope. “I hope you do.”

After meeting the Pope, Trump went downstairs to meet Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican foreign minister. He was accompanied by Rex Tillerson, U.S. secretary of state, and H.R. McMaster, his national security adviser. The meeting lasted 50 minutes.

“It is hoped that there may be serene collaboration between the state and the Catholic Church in the United States, engaged in service to the people in the fields of health care, education and assistance to immigrants,” the Vatican said.

The discussions also included “an exchange of views” on international affairs and on “the promotion of peace in the world through political negotiation and interreligious dialogue, with particular reference to the situation in the Middle East and the protection of Christian communities.”

United States First Lady Melania Trump is a practising Catholic, her spokeswoman has confirmed.

Following speculation over Mrs Trump’s faith during her visit to the Vatican on May 24th, her spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham confirmed to Daily Mail.com that the First Lady is indeed Catholic.

Mrs Trump placed flowers at the feet of a statue of the Virgin Mary and spent time praying at the Bambino Gesù Hospital during her visit. She also presented Pope Francis with rosary beads for the Pontiff to bless.

It is unclear when Melania Trump became Catholic. She was raised in a Communist-supporting family in Slovenia and was not baptised as a child. She married Donald Trump, a life-long Pres-byterian, in 2005 at an Episcopal church in Palm Beach, Florida.

Despite her husband being inaugurated US president in January, she is not due to move into the White House until the summer. When she does, she will be the first Catholic to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since President John F Kennedy and his wife Jackie in the early 1960s.

Gunmen attacked a group of Coptic Christians travelling to a monastery in central Egypt, killing 28 people and wounding 24, with many children among the victims, Health Ministry officials said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came on the eve of the holy month of Ramadan. It followed a series of church bombings claimed by Islamic State in a campaign of violence against the Copts.

Islamic State supporters reposted videos from earlier this year urging violence against the Copts in Egypt. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack on a bus carrying Coptic Christians that killed 29.

Eyewitnesses said masked men opened fire after stopping the Christians, who were in a bus and other vehicles. Local TV channels showed a bus apparently raked by gunfire and smeared with blood.

Clothes and shoes could be seen lying in and around the bus, while the bodies of some of the victims lay in the sand nearby, covered with black sheets.

The attack, which Egypt’s Muslim leaders condemned, happened 15 km (10 miles) from the monastery, a security official on the scene told Reuters. Ambulance workers, monks and Muslim clerics were also present but declined to speak.

Police armed with assault rifles formed a security perimeter and officials from the public prosecutor’s office were gathering evidence and fingerprints. Heavily armed special forces arrived later wearing face masks and body armour.

After malware hacked as many as 200,000 computers throughout the world, the Russians have an idea: Blessing the computers with holy water.

The most recent attacks have been through a form of ransomware called “Wanna-Cry,” which is malicious software that locks up a person’s data and demands, either through a pop-up window or e-mail, that a ransom be paid or else the data will be destroyed.

The cyber attacks have largely targeted hospitals, academic institutions and large businesses like blue chip companies or movie theatres in more than 150 countries throughout the world, including in China, Japan, India and the U.K.

Russia was among one of the worst-hit countries in the attack. Part of their solution? Invite Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church to bless computers and servers with holy water. Aside from prayer and holy water, tech experts recommend avoiding cyberattacks by keeping computer software up to date, installing anti-virus software, and avoiding suspicious e-mails or pop-ups.

The commission that now-retired Pope Benedict XVI established to study the alleged apparitions of Mary at Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, reportedly voted overwhelmi-ngly to recognise as supernatural the first seven appearances of Mary in 1981. However, according to a report published by the website Vatican Insider, the commission was much more doubtful about the thousands of alleged visions that have occurred since 4 July, 1981, and supposedly continue to this day.

Two of the 17 commission members and consultants thought the alleged visions after the period of June 24-July 3, 1981, were not supernatural, while the other members said it was not possible to make a judgment.

The commission said it was clear that the six alleged visionaries and a seventh who claims to have begun receiving messages from Mary in December 1982 were not given adequate spiritual support. Vatican Insider published its piece on the report on 16 May, three days after Pope Francis spoke about some details of the report to journalists travelling with him from Fatima, Portugal.
The Vatican press office declined to comment on the Vatican Insider piece today (17 May). Speaking to journalists on 13 May, Pope Francis said that, regarding the Medjugorje commission’s work, “three things need to be distinguished.”

“About the first apparitions, when (the ‘seers’) were young, the report more or less says that the investigation needs to continue,” the Pope said, according to the English translation posted on the Vatican website.

“Concerning the alleged current apparitions, the report expresses doubts,” he said. Furthermore, “personally, I am more ‘mischievous.’ I prefer Our Lady to be a mother, our mother, and not a telegraph operator who sends out a message every day at a certain time — this is not the mother of Jesus.” Pope Francis said his “personal opinion” is that “these alleged apparitions have no great value.”

Pope Francis gave the Catholic Church two of its youngest saints, canonizing shepherd siblings believed to have seen the Mado-nna 100 years ago in a Portuguese town that is now a major pilgrimage site.

Hundreds of, thousands of, people, many of whom slept outdoors to hold their places, broke into applause as the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics proclaimed the siblings — Francisco and Jacinta Marto — the newest of the Church’s saints. The two died at the ages of 10 and 9 years old, within three years of the 1917 apparitions, making them the youngest saints of the Church who were not martyrs.

The Virgin of Fatima is venerated by Catholics around the world, a following underscored by the many national flags fluttering in the huge crowd, estimated at more than half a million. Marie Chantal, 57, a life-long devotee, travelled more than 9,000 km (5,600 miles) from the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean to attend the ceremony.

For four days from 24-28 May, the Kirchentag was one of the highlights of the Reformation Jubilee. Prominent religious leaders, politicians, economists and other well-known personalities, including former US President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed Muhammad el-Tayyeb, spoke on and debated current social and political issues and thousands worshipped together and attended the many concerts and cultural events. Most of the prominent speakers deplored the recent terrorist attack in Manchester.

Standing in front of the famous Brandenburg Gate – which was cut off from West Berlin by the Berlin Wall during the 40-year Cold War and became the best known symbol of a divided Germany – Barack Obama called out to the crowds, “In this new world we live in, we can’t isolate ourselves, we can’t hide behind a wall.”

Strongly supported by Obama, Merkel defended her asylum policy. Pointing to the “dilemma” of the gulf between Christian compassion and Realpolitik, she once again underlined the importance of welcoming those in real need of protection but rejecting those who did not conform to asylum conditions.

Tymoteusz Szydlo, 25, son of Poland’s Prime Minister was ordained on Saturday May 27 in a ceremony attended by the Polish head of government and her family in the southern city of Bielsko-Biala. Prime Minister Szydlo’s other son, 23-year-old Blazej, is a medical student.

Within the next 10-20 years, a new and controversial fertility technology called in vitro gametogenesis could make it possible to manipulate skin cells into creating a human baby. However, this groundbreaking research has caused push-back from some critics, like Fr Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Centre, who says IVG would turn procreation into a transaction.

“IVG extends the faulty logic of IVF by introducing additional steps to the process of manipulating the origins of the human person, in order to satisfy the desires of customers and consumers,” Fr Pacholczyk told CNA in an email interview.

“The technology also offers the possibility of introducing further fractures into parenthood, distancing children from their parents by multiplying the number of those involved in generating the child, so that 3-parent embryos, or even more parents, may become involved,” he continued.

However, Fr Pachol-czyk hopes that potential parents will come to realize that children should not products that can be ordered or purchased by consumers, and should rather be seen as a gift. “Turning commer-cial laboratories to crea-te children on our behalf is an unethical step in the direction of treating our offspring as objects to be planned and created in the pursuit of parental grati-fication, rather than gifts received from the Lord.”