Journalist and religion commentator. Author: Defenders of the Faith out now from @HodderFaith In the UK https://nitter.cf/t.co/JuWNYNMM7a In the US https://nitter.cf/t.co/cR8JUQiF04
London
Joined December 2011
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The only book you’ll need to understand what’s actually going on at the #Coronation📷 on Saturday DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH. Buy now >> In the UK: bit.ly/DefendersUK In the US: bit.ly/DefendersU
@HodderFaith
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
Melania Busted: A Shameless Attempt to Steal Credit from a Ailing Pope
In a repulsive new low even for the Trumps, Melania Trump ignited a well-deserved firestorm Friday after her pathologically dishonest husband and his regime had the audacity to credit her with single-handedly securing a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in the city of Oleshky.
The grotesque claim was instantly blasted by critics who called out the regime for trying to hijack credit from Pope Leo. In a display of true selflessness that puts the Trumps to shame, the cancer-stricken pontiff had already called Russian President Vladimir Putin to request the Oleshky ceasefire a full week before Melania announced her fictional deal. The Pope made that critical call from his hospital bed, where he is currently fighting for his life and recovering from lung cancer surgery.
Yet, completely unbothered by the timeline, Melania's top adviser, Marc Beckman, shamelessly brushed aside the Pope's vital intervention to insist the achievement belonged to the First Lady alone.
"Yesterday she brokered — single-handedly brokered — a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine within the area of Oleshky," Beckman bragged on Fox & Friends Weekend on Saturday. In a staggering twist of delusion, Beckman even claimed that Melania inspired the Pope to get involved, rather than the other way around.
Equally detached from reality, Donald Trump is doubling down on his wife's rewritten history, telling reporters with a straight face that she is "doing better than the professionals right now."
To top off the entire embarrassing spectacle, Melania herself later added, "It is great to have [the] Pope’s support."
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
El historial de versiones del documento. 214 revisiones. Cuatro horas y media de escritura repartidas en tres días, con sus borrados, sus frases a medias y sus pausas.
El profesor lo miró y me dijo que el sistema de detección es muy fiable.
Le pregunté qué margen de error tiene. No lo sabía.
Le pregunté quién había validado ese 97 %. Tampoco.
No denuncié a nadie. Presenté la revisión de la calificación por escrito y adjunté el historial.
Se la corrigieron a la semana siguiente.
Lo que me preocupa no es el cero. Es que a mi hija le dijeron delante de la clase que había hecho trampas, y la prueba de que no era así la tenía yo en una pestaña del navegador.
Están usando una máquina para acusar a adolescentes sin saber cómo funciona la máquina.
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
Mi hija entregó un trabajo de historia que escribió en tres tardes en la mesa de la cocina, delante de mí. Le pusieron un cero. El motivo: “97 % de probabilidad de haber sido generado con inteligencia artificial”. Pedí una reunión y llevé una cosa en el portátil...
Worth reading if you are despairing about the quality of discourse around refugees and the refusal of some people to acknowledge the worth of human beings who are different to ourselves.
On "shit countries."
The very first refugee I interviewed during my time in Nairobi with the @JesuitRefugee Service was a Somali man named Ali. This was in 1992, at the beginning of my two-year stay, and I was helping at a UN intake center that was processing asylum applications. Later I would meet and work with many Somali refugees, who had fled the war that had recently consumed their country.
At first, I assumed Ali was some sort of nomad or perhaps a poor farmer, because of his dissheveled appearance and his ragged clothes. I saw him as a "typical refugee," though I had little understanding of what that meant. At the time I had already learned a little Swahili so I asked him, rather pompously, what language he would like to speak in.
He replied in perfect English, "I can speak in Swahili of course, but also English, French, Italian and," he paused, "Latin." Ali had been a professor of philosopy at the University of Mogadishu who had received his doctorate at the University of Florence. He had fled violence in his country, along with his family, and ended up in Nairobi. (I tell his story at length, which I transcribed from a tape, in my book "This Our Exile.")
"I have five children, all small," he said. "We just want peace now."
It is easy to call countries "shit countries," especially if you've not spent much time there or don't know many people from that country. Most migrants and refugees would much prefer to stay home, but war, violence or famine prevents that. And they do exactly what we would do: flee to a safe place to protect their families and themselves.
I will always remember Ali, and how he challenged my idea of what a refugee is. Basically, they are us.
Good morning! I’m here @BBCr4today to give my Thought for the Day, this time on restlessness. On air 7.48 am approx. #TFTD
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
Pope Leo to lead Sunday prayers as he recovers from lung surgery, Vatican says.
First picture released of Pope Leo since his surgery as he celebrated Mass today in the Gemelli hospital with medical & nursing staff.
Photo: Vatican Media
edition.cnn.com/2026/10/16/e…
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
Dear friends: Pope Leo needs all our prayers, as he now faces treatment for lung cancer. Let me suggest that we ask Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette to intercede for him, as well as for his doctors, nurses and caregivers, so that he might be quickly restored to full health.
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
Pulling for @Pontifex, the most thoughtful and impactful moral leader on the planet today. The world, not just Catholics, need his voice, his kindness, his decency and his wisdom.
Pope Leo XIV's surgery confirmed that he has lung cancer and he had the lower lobe of his right lung removed, the Vatican said Tuesday.
The tests confirmed a diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma, the Vatican said in a medical bulletin after the surgery. It said the diagnosis had been suspected by preoperative tests and was confirmed during surgery.
The frankness that the Vatican is showing over this is refreshing. Hasn’t always been the case when it comes to papal health.
The Pope had part of his lung removed as cancer was confirmed, Vatican says
cnn.com/2026/10/13/europe/po…
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
Following his meeting with Pope Leo XIV on Monday, Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Military Services, USA, released a statement saying "any Catholics assigned to the firing squad" for the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan "request to be excused from this action contrary to the teaching of the Church.”
Statement: milarch.org/archbishop-brogl…
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
Pope Leo XIV reaffirms Catholic teaching that the death penalty is "inadmissible", posting a day after Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Holy See Secretary of State, spoke out against the planned public execution of Nidal Hasan.
NB In 2011, Rev. Robert Prevost sent a message to the then Governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn, to thank him for abolishing capital punishment.
nitter.cf/Pontifex/status/210888…
The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment: effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. #NoDeathPenalty
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
Pope Leo XIV will undergo surgery to remove a localized lung nodule, with a Vatican spokesman saying the surgical intervention is expected to take place early next week. Leo, 71, is relatively young for a pope and is generally seen as being in good health. His time in hospital post-operation is expected to be about a week.
cnn.com/2026/10/11/world/pop…
Good morning! I’m here @BBCr4today to give my Thought for the Day - on deep listening and silence. On air 7.48–7.50 am approx. #TFTD
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
This is the kind of incident that makes life in Great Britain so infuriating so regularly nowadays: many people bought tickets for a specific date & time to see the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum. While in the queue to enter, they were handed a paper telling them the gallery was closing & their visit was cancelled. A "private event" was scheduled at the museum. Some people had travelled a long way at some expense. Many had gone to considerable trouble to arrange their schedule to spend the day in London. All had paid a large fee for the ticket, which the museum happily accepted, while also accepting a booking for a private event that would make the visit the ticketholders had paid for impossible.
The museum invited the ticketholders they turned away to get in contact to reschedule - I imagine this would not be straightforward, as almost all interactions with big institutions these days involve being put on hold for patience-testing amounts of time & then dealing with someone in another country who is being paid tuppence &, while trying their best, may not have English as a first language. Does the museum not realise what huge inconvenience they have caused? Most people's lives are very busy. For many, this was a big event they had planned for & looked forward to.
There is such deep thoughtlessness in the decision to turn ticketholders away - I can't help thinking those who work at the museum do not care about their visitors at all. And yet a museum is set up to display its collection to the public. That is its goal.
Those in the museum are at the service of the British people before anything else. They ought not to treat those they serve with such cavalier disregard.
Waited since I was 7 years old to see the Bayeux Tapestry. Got in an hour-long online queue to spend £50 on tickets. Got there ahead of time. Stood in a queue for 20 minutes. Then was told halfway through the queue that the gallery was closing.
The @britishmuseum stinks 😭
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
Waited since I was 7 years old to see the Bayeux Tapestry. Got in an hour-long online queue to spend £50 on tickets. Got there ahead of time. Stood in a queue for 20 minutes. Then was told halfway through the queue that the gallery was closing.
The @britishmuseum stinks 😭
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
I went to see the Bayeux Tapestry last week.
I was fascinated by it as teenager and so excited that it was going to be in London at the @britishmuseum that I booked tickets within minutes of them being released.
I took an elderly friend with me.
Excitement soon dwindled to utter boredom.
Queuing for the security check started the process.
Then queuing to enter the exhibition.
Followed by, you guessed it, a queue to get to a queue to start the queue to see the tapestry. I kid you not.
From the start, it took over 1 hour and 30 mins to make it to the front of the tapestry.
The queue was so slow that we saw each of the videos describing the exhibit multiple times.
My elderly friend was tired and asked to sit. She was told “if you sit then you will have to rejoin the queue at the end.”
When we finally made it into the long hall displaying the tapestry we were barked at to “keep moving” non stop. With the sound of babies crying as a backdrop. So much for being able to look at it in peace. I am surprised they didn’t use a cattle prod to make people walk faster!
Today, if the tapestry was made it would show queues of people. Actually, it sort of did! Queues to get on the boat, queues to fight the English, queues to fight the French.
So, British Museum, you need to sell half the number of tickets for each time slot. You need to have places for the elderly to rest if you are going to make them queue multiple times. And you need to ban children under the age of 8 since they simply don’t have any interest in the exhibit and ruin it for the rest of us.
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
It still feels unreal. Almost two years since Kim Leadbeater first announced she was going to bring forward her assisted suicide bill, almost two years since we started organising the lawyers' letter to the Observer where serious concerns over the bill were first expressed, and it's finally been defeated.
Doubtless supporters will try again, but the appetite is clearly not there in Parliament, the Senedd, the Scottish Parliament and across the country as a whole for such reckless social change.
Yesterday was a real victory for society's most vulnerable. This bill, under the pretence of alleviating suffering, would have endangered those most at risk of coercion, social pressure and their own dark thoughts because of their race, sex, social standing, disability or mental ill health.
Canada, Oregon, and other jurisdictions show the ineluctable propensity of assisted suicide laws to expand further. I'm certain that the Terminally Ill Adults Bill would have snowballed into a capacious assisted suicide and euthanasia regime in this country as well. It was right for the Commons to think again, to heed the House of Lords' concerns, and to decide not to cross that moral Rubicon.
I'm glad to wake up this morning in a country where the spectre of a state that assists terminally ill people to end their own lives has been banished. But now it's time for us all to commit to the state truly assisting terminally ill people to die with dignity and peace. Excellent, universal palliative care is sorely needed in this country. If advocates of yesterday's reckless bill were to put even half the same effort into campaigning for true dignity in dying, the political pressure to improve palliative care would be unstoppable. It's time for us all to commit to that project.
Catherine Pepinster retweeted
The Prime Minister has transferred his constitutional responsibility to advise the Sovereign on Church appointments to the Lord Chancellor.
The gov’t will also legislate to correct the “antiquated and archaic anomaly” which prohibits Catholic or Jewish premiers offering advice.
