Father Jose Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, wrote in a front-page editorial published yesterday in L'Osservatore Romano that there is no danger of an impending Apocalypse when the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012.

"In the media and on the internet there is a great deal of talk of the end of the world, which the Mayans supposedly predicted for Dec 21. If you do a search on Google, you get 40 million results on the topic," Father Funes wrote in the article entitled, "The end is not nigh - at least for now."

It was "not even worth discussing the scientific basis of these claims," he said.

He went on to explain that even though the universe is indeed expanding and, if some theories are correct, will at one point "break away", this wouldn't happen for billions of years.

Besides, he said, Christians profoundly believe that "death can never have the last word."

© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com