Pope Francis......................

Happy 6th Birthday Kurt....................

Six short years and 8,000 plus post Kurt Harden has created a large list of readers on a daily basis. If you are not one of the his loyal followers you should be, click here to check out what you have been missing.

Monks win Appeals Court...casket manufacturing

Click here to check out a post from A Simple, Village Undertaker concerning the Monks winning their case in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

From the St. Joseph Abbey web site:

SAINT JOSEPH WOODWORKS
For more than 100 years, the abbey has maintained and cultivated an abiding spiritual presence in southern Louisiana that is manifested in our daily rhythms of prayer and witness through a life of simplicity. One physical symbol of the simple Benedictine life of prayer has been the pine caskets in which we monks are buried.
Over the years, the abbey has been asked to produce these caskets for individuals and has done so only on a very small scale and to select friends. Today, in an effort to support the needs of the abbey and to help maintain its communal life and apostolates, we are beginning to make available to the general public a line of cypress caskets under the name Saint Joseph Woodworks. We also hope that this enterprise will serve as a witness, to educate the greater community to the true meaning of death as taught by our Catholic faith.

Click here for Fox News "Benedictine Monks Sue Louisiana"
Click here for the Abbey's web site which is very nicely done and very interactive.

Handling the public and journalists..........

"It's true hard work never killed anyone, but I figure, why take the chance"

From TIME.com

"Seated on a chair on stage in an audience hall next to St Peter’s Basilica, the Pope was greeted by the assembled journalists with applause and a few cries of “Viva.” Whether performing mass or giving an address, Francis’ speaking style is more like that of an actor than a preacher: his tone is intimate, with touches of humor and folksiness, but he never loses command of his audience. In his delivery, if there’s a politician he resembles, it’s Ronald Reagan. During one passage in his address thanking the media for their “service” covering the conclave, Francis broke from the text, looked up and said with a smile: “You’ve worked, eh? You’ve really worked.”

Impressed that Pope Francis is compared to Ronald Reagan, click here to read the complete article.