The day before this issue went to press, we watched on our newsroom monitors the devastating fire at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris.

Why would you give today? Because telling the stories that matter most makes all the difference, for the church and world, now more than ever.

The history of the magazine spans the entire life of Paramount Pictures.

Magazines like America are not really the first draft of history. But from time to time, when the publishing planets align, we break news as well as analyze it.

In 1909, the editors relied on the telegraph to stay connected to their international network. Today, even the editor in chief can use his iPhone to file a column from a bus en route to Bethlehem.

We must see new technologies as opportunities for evangelization and solidarity rather than scary, bewildering forces that can only pull us apart.

We are launching a new segment in Dispatches, our traditional section for news. It’s called, appropriately enough, GoodNews, and will feature stories that I hope will give you some sense of the almost miraculous things that countless people of faith do every day around the world.

As is our annual custom, we republish excerpts from these texts here as an expression of our solidarity with the women and men who will march this month in the nation’s capital.

Each year, America’s editor in chief (yours truly in the present instance) will take an in-depth look at a public figure whose Catholic faith plays a meaningful role in his or her life and work.