Five years ago last October, the superior general of the Jesuits, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, delivered a historic address at Santa Clara University in California, urging that the promotion of justice should have a central place in Jesuit higher education. Father Kolvenbach was not simply innovating. Ten

Since the beginning of the war in Iraq on March 20, 2003, Americans have encountered Shiite Islam in the media more frequently than at any time since the taking of the hostages in Tehran, when the American Embassy in Iran was occupied on Nov. 4, 1979, and Americans were held hostage for 444 days. As

Visiting Rome in early 1959, while still an Anglican priest, I asked a learned Benedictine from Belgium who was prior of the monastery where I was staying, whether he had attended the funeral of Pope Pius XII six months earlier. His reply, an apt comment on the style of papal liturgies of that era:

We have a policy at America of not running many obituaries. The practice saves the editors from agonizing over who gets one and who does not. Of course there are some obvious people who deserve obituaries or appreciations. Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa, for example. Over the last year the theo

Florida Court Overturns Voucher ProgramThe Florida Supreme Court struck down the state’s school voucher program on Jan. 5 in a 5-to-2 ruling that disappointed Florida Catholic Conference officials. The ruling said the Opportunity Scholarship program violates the state’s constitution, whi

Robert Meza is a 40-year-old Arizona state legislator. The district he represents covers portions of central Phoenix, including both middle-class areas of old Phoenix and poor ones populated by Mexican-Americans. During his first term, he heard complaints from those Mexican-American constituents abo

Before the passage, on Nov. 15, of the new document from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on lay ecclesial ministry, there was debate in the bishops’ meetings over whether the term ministry should be used to refer to laypersons working on behalf of the church. The debate endeddramatical

Communist Restrictions Remain, Say CzechsThe Czech Republic bishops’ conference said it could seek international arbitration against a new religious law imposing Communist-style restrictions on church activities. We can’t understand why the state wishes to tie the church down with these

Last August marked the 25th anniversary of the birth of the Polish nonviolent revolution known as Solidarity. On the morning of Aug. 14, 1980, a strike in the Gdansk shipyard began what eventually caused the demise of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. The whole world watched as ordinary peopl

On the bright morning of April 24, in a packed St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict XVI solemnly inaugurated his ministry as universal shepherd in a ceremony filled with symbolic gestures. For hundreds of years, the centerpiece of papal installations had been a coronation, in which the pope was c