Alex Pretti “was known for his kindness and gentleness to the patients,” Father Tasto said. “So don’t pay any attention to the vilification from our national leaders.”
Politics & Society
Posted inDispatches
A former Irish president’s provocative argument: Is infant baptism a threat to human rights?
McAleese desribes baptism as a kind of recruitment tool that ignores how children, as they mature, should be able to freely decide their own religious identity, noting that canon law acknowledges no right to exit Catholicism.
Posted inThe Weekly Dispatch
When Trump betrays our allies, America loses.
The nation’s withdrawal from multilateralism means the U.S. will cease being “in the room where it happens,” self-sabotaging a capacity to advance interests or resolve disputes in coordination with allied states.
Posted inPolitics & Society, Short Take
The U.S. military must make clear to Trump: Invading Greenland would be a war crime.
Should U.S. military personnel obey an order from their commander in chief to invade Greenland?
The violations of international law such an invasion would cause make it clear what the answer should be: No.
Posted inDispatches
Cardinals urge Trump to step back from threats on Greenland and Venezuela
In a rare direct rebuke to a U.S. president, three American cardinals urged the Trump administration to step back from foreign policy strategies and goals that threaten world peace.
Posted inThe Weekly Dispatch
How Vatican diplomats tried to resolve the Trump-Maduro standoff
While the rest of the Catholic world enjoyed its Christmas Eve, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin met with Brian Burch, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, discussing a deal that would allow Venezuela’s President Nicholás Maduro to escape to a comfortable exile in Russia.
Posted inDispatches
Trump’s capture of Maduro has more support in Latin America than in the U.S.
More than a half dozen right-leaning, Latin American heads of state supported the U.S. intervention in Venezuela to depose Nicolás Maduro, including the pro-Trump leaders of Ecuador, Argentina and El Salvador.
Posted inDispatches
In Beirut, viral ‘D.J.-priest’ almost blocked from performing by hardline Christians
The Rev. Guilherme Peixoto, the “D.J. Priest” or “Padre Guilherme,” is globally popular on the techno and house music scene but a lawsuit almost kept him from spinning records in Beirut.
Posted inThe Weekly Dispatch
Trump administration strikes Venezuela—while threatening to deport Venezuelans
President Trump’s newfound concern for Venezuelans has not translated into a reversal of Trump administration decisions to terminate Biden-era temporary protected status for Venezuelans already in the United States.
Posted inDispatches
Inside Venezuela’s capital after Trump administration captures Maduro
While members of the Venezuelan diaspora in Europe and the United States celebrated Mr. Maduro’s capture, in Caracas, residents contemplated the morning’s events in an eerie silence—neither public celebrations of Mr. Maduro’s arrest nor demonstrations demanding his release were evident in Caracas neighborhoods in the immediate aftermath of the American incursion.