Articles by Adele M. Stan

Source: Alternet

The 115 voting members of the College of Cardinals moved with great alacrity to send a signal that they meant to shake up the church. With the election, in a speedy, two-day conclave, of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, they’ve done just that, at least for the sake of appearances, electing the first South American ever to grace the papal throne. In fact, he’s the first pope not to come from a European country.

But it doesn’t end there. Unlike past popes, Bergoglio hails from the Jesuit order of priests, regarded as the intellectual backbone of the church’s academic instititutions, and known as rebellious despite its members’ vow of obedience to the pope. And Bergoglio has chosen a name never before used by a pope: Francis. While we don’t yet know his reasons for choosing that name, it calls to mind the beloved Francis of Assisi, whose mission to the poor, and reverence for animals renders him an honored figure even to those outside of the Catholic faith. read more

Source: Alternet

Right Wingers Marching in DC Is Big News — But the Same Old Faces Are Pulling the Strings

Glenn Beck will tell you that this weekend’s march of right-wing activists on Washington was six months in the making.

Don’t believe a word of it. Try 40 years.

As disgruntled white taxpayers joined conspiracy theorists, gun enthusiasts, state-sovereignty activists and outright racists on Pennsylvania Avenue, the long-time leaders of the American right, whose pedigrees go back to the 1964 presidential campaign of Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., no doubt witnessed a day they thought might never come. read more