When Pope Francis first started out as an auxiliary bishop in Buenos Aires in 1992 he was assigned as vicar to the Flores district which was in fact the part of town in which he had grown up And he would later relate that the work there was easy because he just had to keep doing what the previous

In 1990 when nbsp Cardinal Karl-Josef Rauber now 80 became the President of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy mdash the Vatican rsquo s training school for diplomats mdash he made a point of making sure that his students took weekend parish calls ldquo You cannot just be a bureaucrat or yo

Can nature be more rarified than in a rainbow Earth donates water droplets Sunlight supplies the rest A rainbow is the most ethereal element of God rsquo s creation Small wonder it was chosen to be the sign of God rsquo s covenant In the presence of water light is reflected refracted dispers

Walmart made headlines on Feb 19 with a decision to increase its wages and establish more predictable work schedules for employees across the country New employees will receive a minimum wage of 9 an hour this year and 10 in 2016 In a letter to Walmart ldquo associates rdquo Walmart CEO and P

It wasn rsquo t until I actually stood upon that porch of Mount Vernon mdash or the ldquo piazza rdquo as it is called mdash that I finally came to appreciate and understand the man who was ldquo first in war first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen rdquo It never would have

Nadia Bulkin 27 the daughter nbsp of a Muslim father and a Christian mother spends ldquo zero time rdquo thinking about God And she finds that among her friends mdash both guys and gals mdash many are just as spiritually disconnected Surveys have long shown women lead more active lives of f

This is the twelfth entry in the Bible Junkies Online Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles The first entrycovered some of the major critical technical and background issues that will concern us as we read through and comment on the Acts The second post found here considered the prologue to th

Congress should reaffirm the principle that government ldquo should not force anyone to stop offering or covering much-needed legitimate health care rdquo because of a conscientious objection to abortion or other procedures said Cardinal Se n P O rsquo Malley of Boston and Archbishop William E

The critics of popes past and present all have one things in common.

Who gets to be in the Academy of Motion Pictures and Arts There are 19 branches to the Academy -- 17 for specific fields like Acting Directing Set Design and two ndash Members-at-Large and associates -- for people who don rsquo t fit in the other categoriesTo get into the Academy you have to b

I found something very moving and even Ignatian in a reflection from Oliver Sacks composed as an anticipatory look back on his life spurred on by news of metastatic cancer An excerpt I have been increasingly conscious for the last 10 years or so of deaths among my contemporaries My generation

Some Mexicans used Ash Wednesday to rebuke authorities who insist that 43 students were kidnapped, killed and then had their bodies burned in a garbage dump and ashes tossed in a river.Classmates and families of the missing students reject the explanation of what happened. So on Feb. 18, in predomin

Catholic leaders condemned "racism and xenophobia" in Europe and urged religious communities to speak out against a growing "nationalism of exclusion" of the type that preceded both world wars.The Conference of European Justice and Peace Commissions called it a "matter of se

In 1912, at the tender age of 24, an aimless, alcoholic college dropout named Eugene O’Neill tried to commit suicide in a New York City flophouse called Jimmy-the-Priest. By then he’d already been married, had a son and divorced, and there was much more personal tumult to come in his eve

President Obama said Thursday he doesn’t use terms like Islamic extremism because doing so would promote the false idea of a Western war with Islam, which would help extremists recruit more terrorists.“No religion is responsible for terrorism — people are responsible for violence a

Choose God, choose good, not to be a total failure, maybe hailed by the masses, but ultimately nothing more than a worshiper of "trivial, pithy things that pass.”This was Pope Francis reflection Thursday morning during Mass at Casa Santa Marta. The Pope centered his homily on the Bible pa

Cuban diplomat welcomes the deal, but has demands of his own.

Years after he had been appointed Bishop of Xai-Xai in Mozambique now Cardinal J lio Duarte Langa 87 was asked how he had reacted to the announcement He explained ldquo Well I think the Holy Father at the time was looking for someone better and not finding anyone exceptional he just settled f

Most of what Cardinal Luigi De Magistris 88 spent his life doing you rsquo ll never hear about Not because it wasn rsquo t important but because it was Born into a well-known family in Cagliari the capital city of the island of Sardinia off the west coast of Italy Cardinal de Magistris spent m

Sixth graders were “really grossed out” by list of possible sins to confess.