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As predicted, the Polish government of Donald Tusk is trying say the terrorist was a right-winger.
Now they will try and use this as a pretext to shut down the Independence Day march. Just watch.
It seems like Poland is going full speed into the EU’s agenda in a blink of an eye.
The amount of propaganda the EU is going to push out of this, against good people who simply have right wing views, is going to be out of this world…
This guy was a clear lunatic… And now they’ll use this to try to make everybody who votes to the right of Joseph Stalin a criminal.
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A 15-year-old girl who lived inside the Vatican went to her flute lesson in 1983 and never came home.
Thirty-five years later, an anonymous letter told her family: "Search where the angel looks."
Emanuela Orlandi was a citizen of Vatican City, the smallest country in the world. Her father worked for the papal household, and the family lived within the walls, a few steps from St. Peter's.
On June 22, 1983, she took the bus into Rome for her music school near Piazza Navona. Afterwards she phoned home: a man claiming to work for Avon had offered her a job handing out flyers at a fashion show. Her sister told her not to take it. Emanuela was last seen at a bus stop on Corso Rinascimento with another girl nobody ever identified. Then she was gone.
Anonymous callers soon tied her to the man who had shot Pope John Paul II two years earlier and demanded his release. Investigators later called that a smokescreen. In 2012 police even opened the tomb of a Roman gangster buried inside a basilica. Nothing.
Then the letter arrived, with a photo of a marble angel in the Teutonic Cemetery, a tiny graveyard inside the Vatican itself.
On July 11, 2019, Vatican workers opened the tomb beneath the angel and the one beside it. Both belonged to 19th-century princesses.
Both were completely empty. Not Emanuela. Not the princesses. Nobody.
In 2023, the Vatican opened its first official investigation into her disappearance. Her brother Pietro, who has spent four decades holding up her poster in St. Peter's Square, is still waiting.
She would be 58 today.
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Polski bohater policjant, który będąc na patrolu zneutralizował zamachowca nie będąc na to zupełnie przygotowanym.
Uratował pewnie wiele żyć bo napastnik był uzbrojony po zęby.
Ze względu, że dostał trzy postrzały z broni automatycznej walczy obecnie o życie na stole operacyjnym.
Proszę o modlitwę za jego zdrowie.
Nazywa się Kamil Kosin.
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IRELAND PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT IS BEING PLANNED
@HMcEntee here is trying to keep a straight face while telling the Irish public that “Russian hybrid warfare” attacks (supposedly fostering illegal immigration, deploying unmarked soldiers, disinformation campaigns, sabotage, cyberwarfare, bomb threats) are an actual concern. Why would Russia provoke Europeans? What is in it for them? Think about it. There’s NOTHING to be gained. Europeans currently have no appetite for war and that SUITS Putin.
The likes of this performance here is to make you feel worried. To make you have an appetite for war. When the truth is these “hybrid attacks” have nothing to do with Russia (and you don’t need to be a Putin fan to discern that). They are likely psychological operations designed to create the conditions to target Russia. They KNOW you don’t want our neutrality obliterated and they need you onside.
The war in Ukraine is being kept going to exhaust Russia’s military expanse. Ukraine is a nazi dictatorship and the Azov battalion is torturing and killing their own people who resist being dragged further into war. Men and teens are being dragged with violent force off the streets. In front of their families. They’re being sent to die. Even males with disabilities are not safe. Whole generations of men are being wiped out. Their land is being gifted to Blackrock and Goldman Sachs under the Land Reform Act, which Zelenskyy signed against the wishes of the Ukrainian people.
Resist all attempts to manipulate you, if you are not paying attention and seeing through the lies, your children will ultimately pay the price. McEntee’s children will be tucked up safely and will never suffer the consequences of her shameful actions. We live in dangerous times. Because our own politicians who have sold out to the EU, UN Agenda 2030 and the WEF, etc. This Red Scare stuff is pure nonsense fear mongering.
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A Mayo secondary school has appealed for information after its chapel and convent were extensively vandalised, with sacred images, religious artefacts and stained glass damaged:
gript.ie/mayo-school-chapel-…
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One of the two initial survivors of a house fire due to a petrol bomb has died in hospital.
May Elliott (6) rest in peace.
That leaves a 14 year old girl still fighting for her life, bearing the loss of both parents and 3 younger brothers.
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Justice for Austin Payne:
A few days ago, Austin Payne, a 15-year-old White boy in Georgia, was hunted, shot, and left to die in an abandoned apartment by four black teen males. He called his mom after being attacked and shot, telling her he was dying. She found his body the next morning after searching all night for him.
Charged with his murder: Jansquincey Donaldson, 15; Omari Marion, 15; Adarious Wallace, 16; Detravion Parker, 22. National media has been completely silent. If four White teens had done this to a Black kid, it would dominate cable news for days. Instead, silence.
They covered the Nolan Wells case wall-to-wall for a drowning. Yet this kid was hunted like an animal and brutally murdered, and because his skin is White, his story will never be told.
Support Austins Family: hallandhallfh.com/obituaries…
White Lives Matter
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IRELAND 🇮🇪
Political leaders have chosen to remain SILENT following a VIOLENT attack on a chapel in Belmullet
Why have they not spoken up?
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Thank you to Dr. Andreas Weber for speaking at the Health Committee of the German Bundestag on behalf of neurologically injured people who have been falsely declared “dead”!
Yes, “brain dead” people react to pain.
I saw this personally when I anesthetized a brain dead organ donor during my training: he responded to the incisions, bone saws, and organ removal just like anyone else, requiring the same types and amounts of anesthesia.
The system is not trustworthy. Refuse to be a registered organ donor.
Sehr geehrte MdB @DrChristinaBaum, vielen Dank für diese bewegende Frage. Es viel mir nicht leicht diese Frage zu beantworten. Seien wir mal ehrlich. Hier geht es um Vertrauen!
Anbei die Seite von Überlebenden. respectforhumanlive.com von @heidiklessigmd
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Fulton Sheen asked Our Lady of Lourdes for suffering or a trial to save a soul.
A young Dutch atheist woman followed him after seeing him in procession, even though she admitted she didn’t know why.
She stayed behind with him, all the while her group’s bus crashed off a bridge, killing everyone!
Fulton stayed until several days until the woman came into faith & she received the sacraments.
For an entire week, every train ticket he bought was turned down, and for a week he was stranded without food or water.
“That was the price I had to pay for her soul.”
Some conversions cost more than we expect. They’re still worth it.
Aren’t you glad people are willing to suffer to save souls?!🤔
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Once every ten days, a bright canary-yellow bullet train glides into Tokyo Station at full speed, yet not a single passenger is allowed to step on board.
Its windows are mostly covered from the inside, its timetable is never published for the public, and there are no ticketed seats in any of its seven cars.
In Japan, every child and every commuter knows this train by two English words: Doctor Yellow.
Since the Tokaido Shinkansen began running between Tokyo and Osaka in October 1964, Japanese bullet trains have carried more than seven billion passengers at speeds up to one hundred and eighty-five miles per hour with zero passenger fatalities from derailments or collisions.
Critics sometimes assume that kind of sixty-year safety record is a miracle of luck.
It is not luck; it is what happens when a nation builds a high-speed hospital train whose only patient is the steel track itself.
Why does Japan run a seven-car bullet train painted bright yellow with zero paying customers on board?
In the early days of high-speed rail, engineers realized that checking hundreds of miles of track on foot at night with hand gauges was too slow, and that tracks behave differently when a three-hundred-ton train slams over them at one hundred and sixty-eight miles per hour.
So Japanese railway engineers took a seven-car Class 923 Shinkansen trainset and packed every car from nose to tail with laser-optical sensors, gyroscopes, accelerometers, and high-speed cameras.
Running in the middle of the regular passenger schedule at a full one hundred and sixty-eight miles per hour, Doctor Yellow fires laser beams onto the left and right rails to measure track width, vertical dip, and curvature alignment down to one-tenth of a millimeter, about the thickness of a single human hair.
At the same time, two special observation domes built into the roof and laser pantographs check the overhead high-voltage copper wire for microscopic wear before a single spark can cause a power outage.
The instant Doctor Yellow detects a rail that has shifted by even a fraction of an inch, it beams the exact GPS coordinates to maintenance crews waiting along the line so they can fix the spot that very night after the last passenger train goes to sleep.
Because its schedule is kept secret so crowds do not pack the platforms, Japanese commuters treat spotting Doctor Yellow by chance as a genuine good-luck charm that brings happiness for the rest of the week.
Safety is never an accident when engineers check their work down to the width of a hair.
(Note: Every photograph-style illustration on my feed is created by AI.)
🤖 Made with AI
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Komfortabel verschwunden
Der Auftaumodus
Früher hatte ein Kühlschrank eine einzige Aufgabe. Er sollte kalt sein. Wenn er nicht mehr kalt war, war er kaputt. Man rief einen Handwerker, der eine Rechnung schrieb, und die Welt war wieder in Ordnung.
Heute hat ein Kühlschrank WLAN, eine App, eine Benutzeroberfläche und gelegentlich einen eigenen Willen.
In Frankreich, den Niederlanden und Deutschland haben Hacker inzwischen damit begonnen, Kühlanlagen aus der Ferne abzutauen. Sogar Blutbanken waren betroffen. Offenbar genügt es mittlerweile nicht mehr, dass Menschen ihre Mitmenschen zugrunde richten. Man möchte ihnen auch noch die Tiefkühlpizza verderben.
Ich las die Nachricht beim Frühstück. Meine Kaffeemaschine hatte gerade ein Softwareupdate abgeschlossen. Anschließend verlangte sie meine Zustimmung zu den neuen Nutzungsbedingungen.
Ich wollte Kaffee. Sie wollte eine rechtsverbindliche Geschäftsbeziehung.
Vor einigen Wochen hatte man mir einen intelligenten Stromzähler eingebaut. Ein freundlicher Techniker erklärte mir, dass ich damit meinen Energieverbrauch besser kontrollieren könne.
Ich hatte allerdings nie das Bedürfnis verspürt, meinen Stromverbrauch kennenzulernen. Die monatliche Rechnung hatte mir bisher vollkommen ausgereicht, um mich zu deprimieren.
Aber Fortschritt lässt sich bekanntlich nicht aufhalten. Besonders dann nicht, wenn er verpflichtend wird.
Inzwischen war fast alles in unserem Haus intelligent. Die Heizung erkannte unsere Gewohnheiten. Der Fernseher kannte unsere Vorlieben. Die Türklingel wusste, wer vor der Tür stand, und das Smartphone wusste, wo ich mich aufhielt.
Nur ich wusste zunehmend weniger, was ich eigentlich wollte.
Eines Morgens meldete der Kühlschrank eine ungewöhnliche Temperaturentwicklung.
>Auftauvorgang eingeleitet<
Ich hatte keinen Auftauvorgang eingeleitet.
Die App erklärte mir, dass der Vorgang aus der Ferne aktiviert worden sei. Aus Sicherheitsgründen sei eine manuelle Unterbrechung vorübergehend nicht möglich.
Ich stand in meiner Küche und sah zu, wie ein Gerät, das ich bezahlt hatte, Lebensmittel vernichtete, die ich ebenfalls bezahlt hatte.
Es war ein bemerkenswerter Augenblick technischer Selbstbestimmung.
Ich versuchte, den Kundendienst zu erreichen. Eine künstliche Stimme begrüßte mich und fragte, ob ich mit der Verarbeitung meiner Daten einverstanden sei.
Ich erklärte ihr, dass mein Käse gerade starb.
Sie bedankte sich für meine Rückmeldung.
Nach sieben Minuten empfahl mir der digitale Assistent einen neuen Kühlschrank.
Der Stromzähler war übrigens unschuldig. Er zählte lediglich den Strom. Für die eigentlichen Dummheiten waren andere Geräte zuständig.
Am Nachmittag las ich, dass man in Europa über strengere Sicherheitsvorschriften für vernetzte Geräte nachdenke. Vermutlich würde man zunächst eine Behörde gründen, anschließend eine Expertenkommission einsetzen und schließlich eine App entwickeln, mit der Bürger den Verlust ihrer Lebensmittel melden könnten.
Ich zog den Stecker des Kühlschranks.
Dann steckte ich ihn wieder rein.
Es funktionierte.
Für einen kurzen Moment empfand ich etwas, das unsere Gesellschaft offenbar vollständig verlernt hatte: unmittelbare Wirksamkeit.
Am Abend saß ich auf der Terrasse. Neben mir ein Glas Whisky, eine Zigarette und ein Buch aus Papier. Drei Dinge, die keine Internetverbindung benötigten.
Mein Smartphone meldete, dass mein intelligentes Zuhause meine Anwesenheit vermisse.
Ich ignorierte die Nachricht.
Vielleicht liegt darin die eigentliche Zukunft des Menschen. Nicht in der Vernetzung sämtlicher Gegenstände, sondern in der Wiederentdeckung des Ausschaltknopfes.
Wir haben Maschinen entwickelt, die uns das Denken abnehmen sollen, und wundern uns nun, dass sie gelegentlich auch die Entscheidungen übernehmen.
Früher hatte man Angst, dass Maschinen eines Tages intelligenter würden als Menschen.
Heute genügt es offenbar, wenn sie genauso dumm sind.
Nur eben mit Internetanschluss.
Gute Nacht. Ihr ...
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Un hombre revisando las vías del tren ha grabado a un negro cortando con un cuchillo y una piedra el cable de seguridad de las vías del tren en trozos para llevarse el cobre.
Los inmigrantes que roban el cobre de las vías provocan accidentes mortales.
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In the 1970s America put millions of children to bed in polyester pyjamas that were up to a tenth flame retardant by weight, and the flame retardant damaged DNA.
It started with a safety rule. Children's nightclothes had been catching fire near open gas heaters, so from July 1973 sleepwear up to size 6X had to pass a flammability test.
Manufacturers found the cheapest fix. A chemical called Tris, blended straight into the polyester. Within a year it was in almost every pair of children's pyjamas in the country.
A chemist called Arlene Blum, working with Bruce Ames at Berkeley, wanted to know if it was getting into the children.
They found a little girl whose mother had bought her pyjamas in Britain, so she had never worn Tris. They put her in a treated pair for one night. The next morning, Tris breakdown products were in her urine. Every night she wore them, the level climbed. When she stopped, it fell.
Then they tested it. It mutated DNA.
In January 1977 they published it in Science, with a subtitle saying the main flame retardant in children's pyjamas should not be used. Three months later it was banned.
The replacement, a close cousin, also mutated DNA. It was quietly withdrawn too.
The warehouses were full. Tens of millions of pairs were shipped abroad and sold to other people's children before exports were banned.
Thirty years later Blum found that same replacement chemical in sofa foam across America.
Wool chars and puts itself out. It passed the fire test before anyone wrote one, and nobody has ever found it in a child's urine.
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🚨JUST IN: 🇵🇱🇩🇪 POLISH MP MAREK JAKUBIAK QUESTIONS WHY COLUMNS OF GERMAN MILITARY VEHICLES ARE TRAVELLING THROUGH POLAND WITHOUT A POLISH MILITARY ESCORT — DEMANDS EXPLANATION FROM DEFENCE MINISTER!
“WHY ARE THEY MOVING WITHOUT SUPERVISION BY THE POLISH MILITARY GENDARMERIE?”
Polish MP Marek Jakubiak has published footage reportedly showing German military vehicles travelling along Poland’s A4 motorway on November 4, 2026, at approximately 10:15 a.m.
According to Jakubiak, witnesses observed two columns of roughly a dozen military vehicles each, including camouflaged trucks and large covered trailers.
Jakubiak questioned why the vehicles appeared to be travelling without an escort from Poland’s Military Gendarmerie (Żandarmeria Wojskowa).
He also pointed out that Germany has no permanent military bases in Poland and publicly called on Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz to explain the movement.
WHY ARE GERMAN MILITARY CONVOYS TRAVELLING THROUGH POLAND — AND WHO AUTHORIZED THEIR MOVEMENT?
The footage raises questions about the convoy’s destination and whether the vehicles were participating in NATO logistics, military exercises or another authorized operation.
There is no evidence in the supplied footage that the movement was unauthorized. Foreign military vehicles do not necessarily require a Polish Military Gendarmerie escort on every journey.
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John Lewis made a Christmas ad where a grandma gets told off by a talking toy dog for putting cash in her grandkids' cards. The store has a very good reason to want that cash.
Its own research says more than half of grandparents give money because they're not sure what to buy. That's a lot of Christmas spending that never gets anywhere near a John Lewis till.
And John Lewis really can't afford to lose it. Last year its department stores did £4.9 billion in sales and kept £58 million of it as adjusted operating profit. That's about a penny and a half on every pound. Then sales dropped 2% in the first half of this year as people stopped buying bigger stuff.
Hand a kid £50 in a card and it's probably going on Amazon or a Roblox top-up, nowhere near a department store.
So watch how the ad plays out. Gloria writes the cards and tucks the cash inside. Pickles, a toy dog voiced by Paul Whitehouse, comes to life, scolds her, and drags her off to John Lewis. On Christmas morning the grandkids open their cards and find them empty, and then Gloria unlocks her "Gran Cave" full of disco lights and presents she picked out herself. The money leaves the envelope and ends up in a John Lewis basket.
The dog doing all the lecturing is a Fisher-Price pull-along toy John Lewis has sold for 60 years, and yes, you can buy him. Kristin Scott Thomas's outfits and the stuff in Gloria's house are shoppable too.
That's what bugs people who grew up on these ads. Back in 2011 John Lewis ran The Long Wait, the one where a little boy is counting down to Christmas so hard you assume he's dying to open his presents. He wakes up, walks right past his pile, and runs to his parents with a gift he wrapped for them. The agency behind that one, Adam&Eve, spent 14 years building John Lewis Christmas around giving. John Lewis replaced them with Saatchi & Saatchi in 2023, and the stated goal for that first campaign was moving shoppers from "consideration to conversion."
The 2011 ad was set to Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want, and fifteen years later John Lewis picked You Can't Always Get What You Want for the one where grandma has to buy her way back into the room.
🚨BREAKING: The John Lewis Christmas Advert 2026 has become one of the worst reviewed in the stores history
The comments on YouTube have been TURNED OFF
There are currently 5 times the dislikes as there are likes
The Plot:
- Entitled children ignore their Grandmother, won't even hug her
- She tries to give them nice, simple, meaningful toys to play with, they ignore her
- She goes to John Lewis to buy expensive toys
- The kids now love her
It's an awful message featuring a diverse family as always
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Ich war 8 Wochen in Neuseeland.
Bevor man dort überhaupt einreisen darf, muss man schriftlich angeben, ob man dreckige Schuhe hat.
Kein Witz. Dreckige Schuhe.
Dazu: Lebensmittel, Honig, Samen, Holz, Zelt. Ob man in den letzten 30 Tagen im Wald oder auf einem Bauernhof war. Und ob man jemals zu mehr als 12 Monaten Haft verurteilt wurde.
Ich hatte Holz in meinem Rucksack. Also angekreuzt.
Am Gepäckband läuft ein Beamter mit Hund an jedem einzelnen Koffer entlang. Danach geht alles nochmal durchs Röntgengerät. Eine Beamtin hat sich mein Holz angeschaut, als würde sie nach Diamanten suchen.
Wer etwas nicht angibt, zahlt 400 Dollar Strafe. Sofort, an Ort und Stelle. Wer etwas Ernstes verschweigt, sitzt im nächsten Abschiebeflieger zurück.
In Deutschland kannst du ohne Pass einreisen und wirst trotzdem oft nicht abgeschoben. Du kannst gegen deine Abschiebung klagen, gegen den Bescheid klagen und gegen so ziemlich alles andere auch.
Bezahlt wird das vom Steuerzahler.
Neuseeland prüft jedes Stück Holz im Rucksack. Deutschland prüft nicht mal, wer da gerade einreist.
Und das merkt man.
Ich habe mich dort so sicher gefühlt wie seit Jahren nicht mehr. Weil jeder weiß: Wer hier Mist baut, kommt gar nicht erst rein.
An den Straßenrändern stehen kleine Holzkisten. Darin liegen Eier, Avocados oder Feuerholz. Daneben eine Blechdose für das Geld. Kein Verkäufer, keine Kamera. Man nimmt sich, was man braucht, und legt das Geld rein.
Die Dinger heißen „Honesty Box“.
In Deutschland würde so eine Kasse keinen Tag überleben. Die Eier vermutlich auch nicht.
Und wenn doch, käme nach einer Woche das Ordnungsamt wegen fehlender Gewerbeanmeldung. Und das Finanzamt wegen der 12 Euro in der Dose.
Neuseeland kontrolliert streng an der Grenze und vertraut dafür jedem im Land.
Deutschland kontrolliert nicht an der Grenze und misstraut dafür jedem, der schon hier ist.
Willkommen in Deutschland.
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IRELAND 🇮🇪
Fine Gael TD Barry Ward took part in a pro Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide demonstration today
It comes as many elderly people are unable to afford heating this coming winter because of his party
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GIRL IN TUSLA CARE ALLEGEDLY SEXUALLY EXPLOITED BY UP TO 30 ADULT MEN, COURT HEARS
A report in today’s Irish Times by Kitty Holland, Wednesday, 4 November 2026, reveals shocking evidence presented to the Dublin District Childcare Court concerning the sexual exploitation of a teenage girl in the care of Tusla.
Judge Conor Fottrell was told that the girl, who has been in Tusla’s care since earlier this year, was being brought to hotels and private residences for sex with up to 30 adult males in exchange for alcohol and drugs.
The judge described the allegations as child sexual exploitation on a scale he had never previously encountered in court, calling the situation horrific.
The teenager’s court-appointed guardian ad litem, Sarah O’Reilly, told the court that an older man had declined to have sex with the girl because she was too young but had subsequently arranged for other men to sexually exploit her.
The court heard that the girl had contracted a number of sexually transmitted infections, had been assaulted by a man and had been using cocaine, cannabis, barbiturates, amphetamines and antidepressants.
Her absences from her care placement had escalated since September, placing her at increasing risk.
Sarah O’Reilly told the court that the teenager needed a special care placement to provide the intensive therapeutic support and protection she required.
However, Tusla’s special care committee had decided on 13 October not to seek a High Court order for her admission to special care. The committee was due to reconsider the decision in November.
The court heard that the girl’s current placement could not provide the level of safety and containment she required.
Judge Fottrell described the circumstances as horrendous and said the teenager’s situation required a high level of therapeutic input, which she would not receive until she was placed in special care.
He also expressed concern about the wider problem of sexual exploitation of children in State care, observing that the issue was recurring before the courts.
The judge said it was appalling that children, predominantly girls, were being exploited at such a horrific level.
He requested a Garda report on investigations into the alleged sexual exploitation of the teenager.
The case highlights the extreme dangers facing vulnerable children in State care and the urgent need for appropriate protective and therapeutic placements.
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I want to know why the Archbishop hasn’t submitted his resignation to the Pope over this. He clearly isn’t fit to lead the Diocese considering he let a fraud minister as a priest for 4 months. This is the kind of thing that should merit an Apostolic Visitation, and quite frankly the resignation of the Archbishop. Souls were put at risk.
Imagine discovering that the priest who had been celebrating Mass and hearing your confession for the past four months wasn't actually a priest at all.
That is precisely the extraordinary situation facing Catholics in Turin, Italy, after a young Egyptian man who had been ministering in three parishes was exposed as an impostor. The 25-year-old, calling himself Fr Salam Faragalla, arrived in June claiming to be a Coptic priest who had moved to Turin to study engineering at the Polytechnic University. He presented what appeared to be authentic documentation of his priestly ordination, dated 31 January 2025, and was welcomed into the parish of Santa Rosa da Lima.
Over the following months, he concelebrated Mass, stood in for parish priests and reportedly heard confessions. Some parishioners noticed peculiarities in the way he celebrated the liturgy, but these were attributed to his supposed background in the Coptic Church. Eventually, a suspicious parishioner raised concerns, prompting further inquiries with the Egyptian ecclesiastical authorities. The documents proved to be false, as did his supposed university enrolment. The Archdiocese of Turin removed him from ministry and reported the matter to the civil authorities. The immediate questions are obvious. How did the deception survive for months? What checks were undertaken before he was permitted to exercise priestly ministry? And what was this young man hoping to achieve? But there is a much more profound theological question here, and it goes to the heart of what Catholics actually believe about the priesthood. If someone who has never been ordained celebrates Mass, is it a Mass? If he hears your confession and pronounces the words of absolution, are your sins forgiven? Catholic theology makes an essential distinction between the validity of a sacrament and the personal qualities of its minister. A validly ordained priest does not cease to be a priest because he is sinful, dishonest or even profoundly unworthy. The sacraments do not depend upon his personal holiness, but upon Christ acting through the ministry of His Church. However, if a man has never received the sacrament of Holy Orders, he does not possess the sacramental character of the priesthood. Dressing as a priest, using the correct words and performing the prescribed gestures cannot confer what ordination alone gives. Consequently, if the man in Turin was indeed never ordained, his attempts to consecrate the Eucharist were invalid. Likewise, he could not confer sacramental absolution. Canon law can, in certain circumstances, supply the necessary faculty to exercise priestly ministry, but it cannot supply the sacrament of Holy Orders itself.
That is an enormously serious matter, particularly for those who approached him in good faith, believing they were receiving the sacraments. Yet we should be careful not to compound their distress. The faithful who were deceived bear no responsibility for the imposture, and the Church's teaching about God's mercy does not suggest that someone sincerely seeking forgiveness is abandoned because another person has deceived them. Those affected should receive clear pastoral guidance, particularly concerning confession.
There is also a lesson here about the importance of the visible, institutional Church. Priestly identity is not something we establish through personal charisma, persuasive preaching or the confidence of a congregation. Ordination is an objective ecclesial reality, publicly conferred and capable of verification.
For all our contemporary emphasis upon pastoral accompaniment, this extraordinary episode reminds us that the priesthood is not simply a function someone performs. It is a sacramental identity received through Holy Orders. The most troubling aspect of this affair may ultimately be the damage done to the trust of ordinary Catholics who came to church seeking Christ and His sacraments. They deserved to know that the man standing at the altar really was a priest.
And surely they deserve an explanation of how such an elementary safeguard failed.
