Dispatches

The president was most clearly moved when remembering the particularly horrific attack on the Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Ct., in December 2012.

It’s really the story of Jesus, if you think about it.

Rather than focus on any one topic, here are ten things I enjoyed this year that you might like for the year to come 2016 (in no particular order).

Maybe the sadness that some of us feel at the holidays is not self-pity but invitation.

In his Christmas Message to the world Pope Francis issued a heartfelt appeal for peace in many of the world rsquo s conflict areas He called in particular for an end to the violence and hatred that is spreading in the Holy Land and elsewhere in the Middle East as well as in several African countr

Bishop Shomali: ‘We hope that this wave of violence stops and more serious negotiations take place in view of a final settlement.’

Greg Burke, an American, and Stefano D’Agostini, an Italian, are early personnel changes in Vatican’s reform project.

The pope struck a very different tone this year, compared to last year when he lambasted 15 “curial diseases.”

Pope Francis has nominated the well-known Irish monsignor Paul Tighe as a bishop and has appointed him as Adjunct-Secretary to the Pontifical Council of Culture The Vatican made the announcement on Dec 19 and said the Pope has named him to the titular episcopal See of Drivasto in Albania nbsp M

“Policies of fear and inflammatory rhetoric will only offer extremists fertile soil.”