Rare Revolution-era tract found in Texas

A rare Revolutionary War-era pamphlet that criticizes Great Britain for taxing its American colonies without their consent has been discovered in a Texas college library.

Austin College archivist Justin Banks found an original copy of an essay written by Cambridge History professor John Symonds titled “Remarks Upon an Essay Intituled The History of the Colonization of the Free States of Antiquity, Applied to the Present Contest Between Great Britain and her American Colonies.”

It was printed in London in 1778, three years after the beginning of the American Revolution.

The pamphlet was donated to the college more than 20 years ago and there are only 100 known copies, one of which was found in Thomas Jefferson’s personal library.

Italian claims Pius XII performed miracle

An Italian woman whose body was ravaged by Stage IV Burkitt’s lymphoma was ready to give up recently as she began praying to Pope Pius XII to intercede on her behalf with God that she might make a recovery.

Maria Esposito was down to 92 pounds and couldn’t bear another dose of chemotherapy in order to try to stem the rare and aggressive form of cancer, but she and her family continued to pray to the World War II-era pontiff, who had appeared to her husband in a dream.

Esposito survived, cured after a single, six-week cycle of chemotherapy — a recovery that, she says, stunned her doctors and convinced her that Pius had intervened with God to save her, according to the New York Post.

“Esposito’s case, which the 42-year-old teacher recounted to The Associated Press in her first media interview, has been proposed to the Vatican as the possible miracle needed to beatify Pius, one of the most controversial sainthood causes under way, given that many Jews say he failed to speak out enough to stop the Holocaust,” according to the Post.