Life is too short to wake up with regrets.
So love the people who treat you right.
Love the ones who don't just because you can.
Believe everything happens for a reason.
If you get a second chance, grab it with both hands.
If it changes your life, let it.
Forgive quickly.
God never said life would be easy.
He just promised it would be worth it.
Five years after being gravely wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq, the Rev. Tim Vakoc, a well-known and well-loved Roman Catholic priest from Minnesota, has died, his family said Sunday.
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Father Tim, as he was known, was the first military chaplain grievously wounded in the Iraq war. He was injured by a roadside bomb as he was returning from celebrating mass with troops on May 29, 2004, the day before the 12th anniversary of his ordination as a priest.
Advised by German solar-panel maker Solarworld AG, the Holy See is running counter to many governments that say harnessing sunlight on a grand scale is too costly to help curb global warming, especially in the deepest recession since World War II.
“Now is the time to strike,” Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, the Vatican City’s governor, said in an interview from his study overlooking the Michelangelo-designed Basilica of St. Peter’s. “One should take advantage of the crisis to try and develop these renewable-energy sources to the maximum, which in the long run will reap incomparable rewards.”
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The Germany-born Benedict has been outspoken on environmental issues since becoming pope in 2005. During an address for World Peace Day in 2006, he said: “The destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use, and the violent hoarding of the Earth’s resources cause grievances, conflicts and wars, precisely because they are the consequences of an inhumane concept of development.”
Pope Benedict XVI today launched a crusade against climate change in his own tiny country by holding his first "ecologically friendly" public gathering at a Vatican audience hall newly powered by solar panels.
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The solar panels will produce about 300,000 kilowatt hours of clean energy a year, offsetting the Vatican's annual Co2 production estimated at 10,000 tons. The system is part of the Vatican's commitment to using renewable energy for 20 percent of its needs by 2020, a goal most European Union countries are striving toward. In so doing, the Vatican will become more self-sustainable and less dependant on Italy for its energy supply.
The pope has shown concern for the issue of climate change linked to global warming for some time. The Vatican hosted a scientific conference last year on climate change and global warming and issued a set of suggestions this summer to travellers and tourist to minimize and offset environmental damage. This included taking less luggage on planes and car journeys, planting trees to offset tourists' carbon footprints and choosing vacation spots in clear harmony with nature.
The Vatican has also been involved this year in a reforestation project in Hungary designed to offset its carbon emissions. The first saplings of oak, white willow, black poplar and wild fruit trees in the Vatican Climate Forest were planted this month in more than 600 acres of forests along the Tisza River.
Made from just flour and water, (salt is OK), they were the perfect Lenten food. Even the easily recognizable and tradition “twist” has its roots in religion. The folded twist is meant to resemble arms crossed in prayer. At one time, people crossed their arms across their chests in pretzel fashion when praying instead of simply putting their two hands together. In fact, in Latin, the word for these braids of bread was “bracellae”, or “little arms”. The word was later corrupted in German to “bretzel”, and, once the voicing was lost from the bilabial stop, it became “pretzel”. Many people following Catholic Law would only eat one meal a day during Lent, but would ease the in between time by snacking on pretzels.
According to pretzel maker Snyder’s of Hanover, a young monk in the early 600s in Italy was preparing a special Lenten bread of water, flour and salt. To remind his brother monks that Lent was a time of prayer, he rolled the bread dough in strips and then shaped each strip in the form of crossed arms, mimicking the then popular prayer position of folding one’s arms over each other on the chest. The bread was then baked as a soft bread, just like the big soft pretzels one can find today. (To be fair, some traditions date the story to even the 300s.)
Because these breads were shaped into the form of crossed arms, they were called bracellae, the Latin word for "little arms." From this word, the Germans derived the word bretzel which has since mutated to the familiar word pretzel.
Another possibility for the origins of the word pretzel is that the young monk gave these breads to children as a reward when they could recite their prayers. The Latin word pretiola means "little reward," from which pretzel could also be reasonably derived.
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It is certainly a case of the old being fused with the new, but will the Pope's partnership with Google be a match made in heaven?
That's a question Catholics are asking as organized religion continues to expand its reach onto the Internet.
The Vatican announced Saturday that its radio and television arms will be collaborating with the Internet search engine giant – which also owns video sharing site YouTube – to bring news of the pontiff, as well as video and text of his speeches to the World Wide Web.
The Roman-Catholic church provided scant details, but promised to release more information about the project on Friday at a media conference so big it has a title and a subtitle: "New Technologies, New Relationships: Promoting a Culture of Respect, Dialogue and Friendship."
