The year began on a dismal note, with Pope Benedict XVI’s death on Dec. 31. Two weeks later, the conservative Australian Cardinal George Pell unexpectedly succumbed in Rome after a routine hip operation. But if the loss of Benedict after a decade of frailty and seclusion was deeply upsetting, and if Pell’s sudden death, days after he authored a stern rebuke of the Vatican’s neo-Marxist interpretation of faith and morals, was dismaying, Neumayr’s premature demise was distinctly unsettling. All three — pope, cardinal, and journalist — have bequeathed a message of urgency, nay emergency, regarding the perilous road the church is treading, a warning that should not be buried with them… In the preceding weeks, Neumayr appears to have been genuinely concerned for his life and bantered back and forth on Twitter with another user about getting whacked. When his phone was snatched on the streets of Abidjan by a passing motorcyclist, Neumayr joked that he’d almost cried out: “Are you with the USCCB?” meaning the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops… (READ MORE)
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