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Voices

Judith Valente, a regular contributor to NPR and "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly," is a journalist, poet and essayist. She is the author of Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home and a Living Faith, named best spirituality book in paperback for 2014 by the Catholic Press Association and one of the three best spirituality books by Religion Newswriters Association. Her book, The Art of Pausing, was runner up for the Catholic Press Association book award in 2014.

Ms. Valente began her work as a staff reporter for The Washington Post. She later joined the staff of The Wall Street Journal, reporting from that paper's Chicago and London bureaus. She was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, first in the public service category as part of a team of reporters at The Dallas Times Herald in the 1980s. In 1993, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer in the feature writing category for her front page article in The Wall Street Journal chronicling the story of a religiously conservative father caring for his son dying of AIDS.

Signs Of the Times
Judith Valente
As a young seminarian in the 1960s, the Rev. Robert Rosebrough marched for civil rights. For most of his 46 years as a priest, he has worked in inner-city parishes. His parish, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta is in Ferguson, Mo., a short distance from where a white police officer shot an unarmed African
Signs Of the Times
Judith Valente
Jordan Becker has close-cropped dark hair, a trim goatee and bulging biceps from lifting weights daily at the gym. Becker did not always look this way. A photograph of Becker at age 4 shows a smiling little girl with ringlet curls in a frilly dress. “My mother had to pay me to wear that dress,
In All Things
Judith Valente
Poet James Merrill once described his fellow writer Elizabeth Bishop as ldquo a genius masquerading as an ordinary woman rdquo I thought of that line after spending two days this past summer working on a profile for PBS-TV rsquo s nbsp Religion amp Ethics NewsWeekly nbsp on the Quaker folk sing
In All Things
Judith Valente
Just as his music defies easy labels, Springsteen the man is giving new meaning to the term "senior citizen."
News
Judith Valente
Chicagoans received the leader they were seeking in Spokane Bishop.
Joe Paprocki leads a session at the 38th annual National Association of Lay Ministry conference held at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, June 3.
Signs Of the Times
Judith Valente
Chicago Catholics are as feisty and independent as the wind that famously whips across this city from its lakeshore. In decades past, they enthusiastically embraced the labor and Catholic Worker movements. At some parishes today, lay people give sub-radar reflections at Sunday Mass.“Catholics
Art
Judith Valente
The history of the Jesuits in America is largely a story of movement—one of crossing first an ocean, then lakes and rivers and ultimately traversing ethnic, linguistic and ideological boundaries. Those journeys ended with a series of dwelling places where both the mind and spirit could expand.