Our Dispatches contributors were kind enough to share some thoughts on what stories are likely to be important in 2022 as we cross off, in some relief, the concluding days of 2021.

Do the new restrictions on the celebration of the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass increase our unity? Or do they sacrifice unity for uniformity?

The Vatican has reaffirmed its support of Covid-19 vaccines with both the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life and a Holy See communique reiterating Pope Francis’ insistence that getting inoculated is “an act of love.”

Since chef Fadi Kattan was a child getting underfoot in his grandmother’s kitchen, the preparation and communal eating of the burbara pudding has been a pre-Christmas symbol of the coming of the holiday on the Palestinian West Bank.

John Updike, long one of the nation's finest novelists and short story writers, also wrote extensively about the Christian imagination (and once on his misgivings about Santa Claus).

Recent edicts and explanations of edicts out of Rome have ignited a familiarly unpleasant conflict in the U.S. church. And yet, though this will infuriate a vocal minority of my fellow Catholics, I just don’t get the brouhaha over the traditional Latin Mass.

In his message for the 2022 World Day of Peace, Pope Francis proposed three paths to peace: dialogue between the generations, greater investment in education and job creation.

President Biden is playing the long game in trying to revitalize the economy after Covid. It may take a long time to figure out how to measure the results.

Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J., speaks about the need for the Canadian church to apologize to Indigenous population for its role in abuse at residential schools.

Patriarch Sabbah: “When you celebrate Christmas, remember that in Bethlehem, in Jerusalem, life is not a Christmas life. It is not the blessed life of the new redeemed humanity. The song of the Angels is far away.”