A shard of bone from the body of St. Francis Xavier—I held it in my hand, gazing at this tiny remnant of a human body centuries old, contained under glass in its small reliquary. This particular relic belongs to one of two collections of relics with which Ihave become familiar at Jesuit parish

"Knowing they were going to die, the H.I.V.-infected parents we were visiting in a slum section of Nairobi were worried about the education of their children.” These were the words of Joseph Oganda, co-founder of the new St. Aloysius Gonzaga High School for AIDS orphans in Kenya. They were rep

Nowadays when I read of Albania in the media, it is often in reference to Albanians who—desperate to escape their poverty-stricken country, where they are also beset by ethnic conflict—flee in rickety boats across the Adriatic Sea toward Italy. If they have not drowned or been intercepte

ldquo We don rsquo t care about your future You rsquo re an inmate and all inmates are the same rdquo Such were the bleak words of a prison official addressed to Michael Santos who is serving time in a federal facility The official a ldquo unit manager rdquo was angry with him for writing

The Gulag Museum in Russia, the Slave House (Maison des Esclaves) in Senegal, the Terezín Memorial in the Czech Republic: what could these places have in common? They all are what have come to be known as sites of conscience. And each represents issues involving human rights; hence the use of the w

Inspirational stories are not what you would expect to find in the Money and Business section of the Sunday New York Times. Its articles are generally of the dollars and cents kind. But a few years ago, paging quickly through that Sunday’s business section, I began to notice a regular column c

Children’s books: why would a senior citizen like me be reading them? And yet I recently read several at quite a clip. This is because a Xaverian brother named Leonard, who teaches reading at a Jesuit middle school near my parish, lent me half a dozen. Leonard often tells me about them during

Backpacks did not figure in my life as a child. At school in Maryland, most students either carried their books in simple satchels of various sizes and shapes made of imitation leather or, in high school, symmetrically arranged on three-ring binders balanced against the hip. Even when theology studi

Buffalo, frigid northern city of—refugees? Yes, refugees. I spent a week in Buffalo last June helping out in a small Jesuit parish, St. Ann’s, located in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Among the first issues the pastor told me about was the struggle of refugees and asylum

The first cold day of the approaching winter found me at the Hoboken Shelter in New Jersey, the only shelter in that rapidly gentrifying city across the Hudson River from Manhattan (www.hobokenshelter.org). Housed in a 19th-century Lutheran church, the shelter has had as its guiding spirit for three