Cuba cleric: Francis criticized church at conclave

HAVANA (AP) — Pope Francis issued a strong critique of the church before the College of Cardinals just hours before it selected him as the new pontiff, according to comments published Tuesday by a Roman Catholic magazine in Cuba.

According to Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega, then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio urged the Vatican to eschew self-absorption and refocus its energies outward.

"The church is called on to emerge from itself and move toward the peripheries, not only geographic but also existential (ones): those of sin, suffering, injustice, ignorance and religious abstention, thought and all misery," Bergoglio said.

Ortega said Bergoglio's comments were made to cardinals as they gathered to select Benedict XVI's replacement, and reflect his vision of the contemporary Catholic Church. He said Bergoglio later gave him a handwritten version and permission to divulge its contents.

"Cardinal Bergoglio made a speech that I thought was masterful, insightful, engaging and true," Ortega said.

Ortega added that the remarks offer insight about the direction in which the new pope could take the church following his March 13 election.

In his statements, the future pontiff also warned of the dangers of stagnation.

"When the church does not emerge from itself to evangelize, it becomes self-referential and therefore becomes sick. ... The evils that, over time, occur in ecclesiastical institutions have their root in self-referentiality, a kind of theological narcissism." Bergoglio said.

He also criticized "a mundane church that lives within itself, of itself and for itself."

Finally Bergoglio said that whoever became the new pope should be "a man who ... helps the church to emerge from itself toward the existential outskirts."

Orgeta first revealed Bergoglio's comments in a weekend Mass, and they were published Tuesday on the website of Palabra Nueva magazine, along with a photo of the two men embracing after Bergoglio had donned the papal white robes and rechristened himself Francis.

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Handless cleric awaiting terror trial in New York gets prosthetics

By Bernard Vaughan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The jail holding Abu Hamza al-Masri, the handless Islamic cleric awaiting trial on U.S. terrorism charges, provided him with a new set of prosthetics on Friday, officials said at a hearing on Friday.

His attorneys had been asking for the new limbs for months, after authorities refused to allow him to wear his usual metal hooks outside of his jail cell.

Britain extradited al-Masri last October. The United States accuses him of providing material support to the al Qaeda network by trying to set up a training camp in Oregon, among other charges.

Al-Masri is being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center next door to the courthouse in lower Manhattan. The Egyptian-born, white-haired preacher appeared in court on Friday without any prosthetics.

Adam Johnson, an official with the MCC, told U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest that the jail will also bring in an occupational therapist to teach al-Masri how to hold things with the new prosthetics "almost in a chopsticks style."

In trying them out earlier on Friday, al-Masri struggled to get used to the limbs' plastic grips, said Lindsay Lewis, one of his attorneys.

In another accommodation, al-Masri, who is also missing an eye, will have access to a laptop computer to review evidence in his cell, Forrest said Friday. Forrest said the accommodation is being made in part because much of the evidence is in Arabic.

"I must say that this is the first time that I have seen such a thing," Forrest said of the accommodation.

Al-Masri will have access to the computer at all times except for when it is charging, Lewis said after the hearing. It does not have Internet access, she said.

Al-Masri will also be able to speak with his family by telephone on March 18, Forrest said. Lewis said after the hearing that he is only allowed to speak to his immediate family.

Although pleased with the accommodations, Lewis told Forrest that al-Masri still had other needs, including a change of sheets more often. After the hearing, Lewis explained he needs a daily change of bedding because of a medical condition. Most inmates at the MCC get clean sheets once a week, she said.

Forrest said that, while she understood Lewis's concerns, they did not rise to a possible violation of al-Masri's constitutional rights, as Lewis suggested.

"It's also not a motel," Forrest said. "So you don't get clean sheets ... on demand."

Al-Masri, who has asked to be referred to in court by his birth name, Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, has pleaded not guilty to 11 criminal charges. His trial was recently pushed back to March 31, 2014, at the request of his attorneys, who cited voluminous evidence they need to sort through.

"It really took this conference in order to get the MCC and the Bureau of Prisons to truly take these requests we've been making seriously," Lewis said after the hearing.

(Reporting By Bernard Vaughan. Editing by Andre Grenon)

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