Hamilton Tiger-Cats lose, but there may be polyextremophiles in Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression, if not the Dallol crater itself

Naturally, surrounded as I was by Winnipeg Blue Bombers fans in Thompson, Manitoba yesterday, and my contrarian chosen Hamilton Tiger-Cats already sadly declawed early in the second quarter, before a national television audience no less, the conversation turned to Ethiopian lakes and nearby locales that hold no life. OK, the analogy may not be quite perfect but close enough, and what else is one to do in a roomful of Westerners who think of places like Toronto and Hamilton as “down east”?

Turns out, while the Dallol crater and its so-called Black and Yellow lakes, located in the Ethiopian Danakil Depression, may not support life, other parts of the larger Danakil do. Or not. Take note Ticats fans.

The Danakil Depression is located more than 100 metres below sea level in a volcanic area in northwest Ethiopia, close to the border with Eritrea, aptly named “Afar.” It is part of the East African Rift System, a place where the Earth’s internal forces are currently tearing apart three continental plates, creating new land, and it is arguably the hottest place on the planet, and one of the driest. Researchers in the field contend with sweltering heat, toxic hydrogen sulphide gas, and chlorine vapour that will burn their airways and choke their lungs without gas masks.

Picking up an article from the Madrid-based Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, the London-based Institute of Physics (IOP) on its physics.org website reported Nov. 22 that “Scientists find a place on Earth where there is no life.” The lede notes: “Living beings, especially micro-organisms, have a surprising ability to adapt to the most extreme environments on Earth, but there are still places where they cannot live. European researchers have confirmed the absence of microbial life in hot, saline, hyper-acid ponds in the Dallol geothermal field in Ethiopia.”

The article goes on to explain the “infernal landscape of Dallol, located in the Ethiopian depression of Danakil, extends over a volcanic crater full of salt, where toxic gases emanate and water boils in the midst of intense hydro-thermal activity. It is one of the most torrid environments on Earth. There, daily temperatures in winter can exceed 45 degrees Celsius and there are abundant hyper-saline and hyper-acid pools with pH values that are even negative” (https://phys.org/news/2019-11-scientists-earth-life.html).

“A recent study, published this year, reports that certain micro-organisms can develop in this multi-extreme environment (simultaneously very hot, saline and acid), which has led its authors to present this place as an example of the limits that life can support, and even to propose it as a terrestrial analogue of early Mars.

“However, a French-Spanish team of scientists led by biologist Purificación Lopez Garcia of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) has now published an article in Nature Ecology & Evolution that concludes otherwise. According to these researchers, there is no life in Dallol’s multi-extreme ponds.”

Lopez Garcia says, “After analyzing many more samples than in previous works, with adequate controls so as not to contaminate them and a well-calibrated methodology, we have verified that there’s no microbial life in these salty, hot and hyper-acid pools or in the adjacent magnesium-rich brine lakes. What does exist is a great diversity of halophilic archaea (a type of primitive salt-loving micro-organism) in the desert and the saline canyons around the hydro-thermal site, but neither is found in the hyper-acid and hyper-saline pools themselves, nor in the so-called Black and Yellow lakes of Dallol, where magnesium abounds. And all this despite the fact that microbial dispersion in this area, due to the wind and to human visitors, is in Thermaltense.”

Jasmin Fox-Skelly, a freelance science writer based in Cardiff, took a somewhat more upbeat approach a couple of years ago, but one based on older data, in her Aug. 4, 2017 piece “In Earth’s hottest place, life has been found in pure acid,” for BBC Future, which describes it website as “something different” in “a complex, fast-paced world of soundbites, knee-jerk opinions and information overload.” BBC Future says it provides a “home for slowing down, delving deep and shifting perspectives” on “almost every topic that matters.”

“In a surreal landscape of colours, dominated by luminescent ponds of yellows and greens, boiling hot water bubbles up like a cauldron, whilst poisonous chlorine and sulphur gases choke the air,” Fox-Skelly’s story opens. “Known as the ‘gateway to hell’, the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia is scorchingly hot and one of the most alien places on Earth. Yet a recent expedition to the region has found it is teeming with life” (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170803-in-earths-hottest-place-life-has-been-found-in-pure-acid).

Fox-Skelly reported that Barbara Cavalazzi from the University of Bologna in Italy, part of a team conducting scientific expeditions in the area since 2013, found life in the Danakil Depression in March 2017, “after they managed to isolate and extract DNA from bacteria. They found that the bacteria are ‘polyextremophiles,” which means they are adapted to extreme acidity, high temperatures and high salinity all at once. It is the first absolute confirmation of microbial life in the Danakil acidic pools.”

So Spanish research? French research? Or Italian research? Life or no life (or some life) in the Danakil Depression?

You know, the sort of questions Hamilton Tiger-Cats fans were asking in their own ways for their applied football science research in Calgary yesterday, while the results were becoming demonstrably obvious on the field on each series of plays.

Science.

When I observed some of the Hamilton players appeared cold, someone helpfully suggested it was probably because the Ticats offence had been idling on the sidelines for so much of the game, and the Winnipeg defensive squad was likely in a similar predicament, even if not visibly showing it, Prairie stoicism and all.

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Pope Francis’ remarkable rapprochement with Protestant evangelicals

Pope Francis, pretty much since his election as supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church in March 2013, has also been the de facto supreme pontiff of world religious leaders among the secular media. Other than the 14th Dalai Lama, long serving Tibetan Buddhist, most journalists would likely be hard pressed to name the current Archbishop of Canterbury (Justin Welby), who leads the worldwide Anglican Communion, much less the leaders of any other Christian denomination.

Pope Francis, of course, rocketed into the media stratosphere on July 28, 2013, little more than four months after being elected pope, when returning on his first foreign papal trip from Rio de Janeiro on the Alitalia flight to Rome July 28, at the end of his seven days in Brazil, wandered back to the press compartment in the rear of the plane and took questions from 21 reporters travelling aboard the papal aircraft for 81 minutes with nothing off the record. Francis stood for the entire time, answering in Italian and Spanish without notes and never refusing to take a question. The Pope’s answer to the last question became the worldwide take-away quote: “If a gay person is in eager search of God, who am I to judge them?” While Pope Francis’ answer shot around the world – for the most part without benefit of being prefaced by the question or contextually situated – it didn’t break any new Catholic theological ground or offer up a new heresy. What it did represent was a change in tone.

And if there was any doubt whether that was the start of a new tone and emphasis, Pope Francis answered that less than two months later on Sept. 19, 2013 when the Italian Jesuit journal La CiviltÀ Cattolica published a 12,000-word interview that took place over three days in August at Santa Marta in Rome between the first Jesuit pope, until little more than six months earlier, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires in Argentina, and Father Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit confrere and the journal’s editor-in-chief.

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods,” Pope Francis said. “This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

“The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.”

While it doesn’t get nearly as much attention as the sex-and-morality hot-button issues of his pontificate, although it does garner some coverage, one of the most interesting facets of Pope Francis in action to watch is his truly remarkable rapprochement with Protestants, particularly evangelicals of all denominations. With no disrespect to either side of the now 43-year-old Joint International Commission for Catholic–Pentecostal Dialogue, Pope Francis has probably done more for harmonious and improved relations between the two groups, as he has with Christian evangelicals of various denominations and non-denominational identities, such as with his now famous impromptu iPhone video message for Kenneth Copeland and other influential evangelicals, done during a January 2014 three-hour breakfast meeting chat at the Vatican with his close personal friend Tony Palmer.

A young English bishop with the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, a group that broke away from the Anglican Church and considers itself part of the Convergence Movement, founded by Anglicans and other Protestants and embracing a middle ground of Anglican identity, Palmer had known Pope Francis since his days in Buenos Aires where he and then-Archbishop Bergoglio had become friends in 2008 when Palmer was a missionary in Argentina and has asked the future Pope’s permission to work with charismatic Catholics in the city. Prior to becoming a Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches bishop, Palmer, married to Emiliana Serzio Palmer, an Italian Roman Catholic, was the director of the Kenneth Copeland Ministries’ office in South Africa. Palmer also served as the director of The Ark Community, an international interdenominational convergent church online community.

During their extended breakfast the Pope asked Palmer what he could do to encourage unity with evangelical Protestants and Palmer pulled out his iPhone and said, “Why not record a video greeting to the group of influential charismatic Christians I am going to meet at a conference in Texas next week?” Palmer was en route to a charismatic conference hosted by Copeland, the well-known American television evangelist who heads up Kenneth Copeland Ministries, at his Eagle Mountain International Church, near Fort Worth. With Palmer holding the iPhone, Pope Francis refers to him as “my brother, a bishop-brother,” saying they had been friends for years.

In that video, which was released publicly in February 2014, Pope Francis says to the evangelicals gathered at the Copeland conference, “Let’s give each other a spiritual hug.”

In introducing the Pope’s video at the Copeland meeting, Palmer pointedly remarked: “Brothers and sisters, Luther’s protest is over. Is yours?”

Pope Francis wound up meeting privately again on June 24, 2014 – a year ago today – with Palmer, and also this time with Copeland, co-host of Believer’s Voice of Victory, James and Betty Robison, co-hosts of the Life Today television program, Rev. Geoff Tunnicliff, chief executive office of the World Evangelical Alliance; well-known Canadian evangelical leader Brian Stiller, Rev. Thomas Schirrmacher, also from the World Evangelical Alliance, and Rev. John Arnott and his wife, Carol, co-founders of Partners for Harvest ministries in Toronto. That meeting also lasted almost three hours and included a private luncheon with Pope Francis.

The Pope told the evangelicals he believed the division in Christianity was not now between Catholics and Protestants but between those Christians who believe in a revealed religion and those who believe in a relative religion. “The real divide is between progressives who wish to alter the historic faith according to the spirit of the age, and those who believe the spirit of the age should be challenged by the eternal and unchanging truth of the Christian gospel.”

James Robison was baptized as a child in the Episcopal (Anglican) Church but as an adult became a Southern Baptist and in the 1980s was one of the first prominent Southern Baptist ministers to openly proclaim he had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

He told the Fort Worth Star Telegram after the meeting last June with Pope Francis, “This meeting was a miracle … This is something God has done. God wants his arms around the world. And he wants Christians to put his arms around the world by working together.”

Tragically, Palmer, 48, died less than a month later on July 20, 2014 in hospital following hours of surgery after a motorcycle accident.

About a week later, Pope Francis made a private visit to the Pentecostal Church of Reconciliation, still under construction in Caserta in southern Italy to meet with Giovanni Traettino, its pastor, and 200 people, including members of Traettino’s congregation, other Italian evangelicals and representatives of Pentecostal ministries in Argentina and the United States.

The pope and Traettino first met in Buenos Aires in the late 1990s when Traettino was establishing ties between charismatic Catholics and Pentecostals. The then-Cardinal Bergoglio and Traettino also appeared together at a large ecumenical charismatic gathering in Buenos Aires in 2006. Traettino was present on June 1, 2014 in Rome’s Olympic Stadium when Pope Francis spoke to an international gathering of Catholic charismatics.

At the meeting with Traettino at the Pentecostal Church of Reconciliation, Pope Francis apologized for the the complicity of some Catholics in the fascist-era persecution of Italian Pentecostals and evangelicals.

“Among those who persecuted and denounced the Pentecostals, almost as if they were crazies who would ruin the race, there were some Catholics. As the pastor of the Catholics, I ask forgiveness for those Catholic brothers and sisters who did not understand and were tempted by the devil.”

Pope Francis made a similar apology two days ago on Monday of this week to the small Italian Waldensian evangelical community, seeking forgiveness for the Catholic Church’s persecution of members of the community whose leader was excommunicated and his followers branded as heretics during the Middle Ages.

Pope Francis made the appeal June 22 during the first-ever visit by a pope to a Waldensian house of worship.

The Waldensian church was founded in the 12th century by Pierre Valdo, a wealthy merchant from Lyon in France, who gave up his belongings to preach a Gospel of simplicity and poverty that condemned papal excesses. He was excommunicated and his followers persecuted as heretics by Rome.

The Waldensians today are united with the Methodist Church of Italy and claim 45,000 followers, mostly in Italy, Argentina and Uruguay.

“On the part of the Catholic Church,” said Pope Francis, “I ask your forgiveness, I ask it for the non-Christian and even inhuman attitudes and behavior that we have showed you. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, forgive us!”

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Catholic cooking: From Pope Francis’ love for Buenos Aires pizzerias to Father Leo Patalinghug, the TV show Filipino ‘Cooking Priest’

“If smell and sound are important to Catholics, so, too, taste,” I wrote last Dec. 18 in a blog post headlined “With our O antiphons, Smoking Bishops and ‘sinful servants’ we are the Church Militant on Earth.” I noted that we had borrowed the “Smoking Bishop,” a mulled wine wassail, “in a spirit of ecumenical breaking of bread at table” from our “Anglican (also known as Episcopalian and Church of England, depending what country you are reading this post in) brothers and sisters, particularly Charles Dickens….” You can read that earlier Christmastide post in its entirety at https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/12/18/with-our-o-antiphons-smoking-bishops-and-sinful-servants-we-are-the-church-militant-on-earth/

As today marks the Fourth Sunday of Lent, could be food is simply on my mind a bit, as I wrote in another post Feb. 13 headlined “Shrived by the confessor: Fat Tuesday and Ash Wednesday arrive for penitents as the liturgical season of Lent is upon us, but not before one last rich feast of pancakes Feb. 17 as shrovetide ends” and Ash Wednesday was some 26 days ago now: https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/shrived-by-the-confessor-fat-tuesday-and-ash-wednesday-arrive-for-penitents-as-the-liturgical-season-of-lent-is-upon-us-but-not-before-one-last-rich-feast-of-pancakes-feb-17-as-shrovetide-ends/

In any event, something Pope Francis said in a recent interview,  to mark the second anniversary of his election to the papacy March 13, with Valentina Alazraki, the veteran Vatican correspondent for Mexico’s Noticieros Televisa at Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican hotel where he has lived since his election on March 13, 2013, caught my eye. Alazraki has covered the Vatican for Noticieros Televisa since 1974. The Spanish-language section of Radio Vaticano published a full transcript of the interview March 12, which you can read here at: http://es.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/03/12/segundo_aniversario_de_la_elecci%C3%B3n_del_papa_francisco/1128922, while an English-language summary of its contents published March 13 by Vatican Radio is available to read here at: http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/03/13/pope_francis_on_his_pontificate_to_date/1129074

It wasn’t the prediction that the 78-year-old pontiff expects to have a short papacy of maybe four or five years that really caught my eye.  Perhaps if Pope Francis had suddenly embraced Jack Van Impe, Cris Putnam and Tom Horn’s view, along with others on the far reaches of Protestant evangelicalism, that he was indeed “Petrus Romanus” (Peter the Roman), who would be history’s last pope, according to the Prophecy of St. Malachy (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/04/the-prophecy-of-malachy/), also known as the Prophecy of the Popes, from 1139, then the time element really would have caught my eye. Alas for would-be date setters and their eschatological ilk (some of whom like to deny they are date setters even when they are for all practical purposes) he didn’t do that. No, what really caught my eye was Pope Francis saying the only thing he really misses as pope is the ability “to go out to a pizzeria and eat a pizza,” adding that even as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires he was free to roam the streets, particularly to visit parishes.

Almost half the population of Buenos Aires can rightfully claim  Italian heritage, so it is little surprise the Argentinian capital is so well-known for its Napoletana pizza. “The only thing I would like is to go out one day, without being recognized, and go to a pizzeria for a pizza,” Pope Francis said, comparing his life now to how it was when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. “In Buenos Aires I was a rover. I moved between parishes and certainly this habit has changed. It has been hard work to change. But you get used to it,”  Pope Francis told Alazraki.

What I want to know is what pizzeria is Pope Francis’ favourite in Buenos Aires? Is he a double-cheese kinda guy with extra pepperoni? Those strike me as the kind of questions this pope just may answer if posed to him.

In a similar vein, I am a big fan of  Father Leo Patalinghug, who was born in the Philippines,  raised in the Baltimore area, ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Baltimore on June 5, 1999, and who works at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland – and who finds time along the way to host Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN’s) half hour Savoring Our Faith show, where he uses the kitchen as his pulpit to preach the Catholic faith while at the same time showing viewers how to prepare flavourful dishes.

Father Leo developed his love for cooking while attending seminary at the North American College in Rome. There, he became friendly with several Italian restaurant owners and would often invite them back to the student kitchen to trade cooking secrets. They would teach him about rigatoni and lasagna; he would show them how to make hamburgers and ribs.

I haven’t caught an episode of Savoring Our Faith for a few months, but I did  see a special report with Father Leo, known as the “Cooking Priest,” back home in the Philippines walking through Central Market in Manila Jan. 16  to do an open air Filipino street food tour, explaining local delicacies to a journalist during January’s papal visit to the 7,107 Islands of Faith.

Mouth watering. Soul satisfying. And so very Catholic.

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