On January 9th, in his Address to Members of the Diplomatic Corps Accredited to the Holy See, Pope Leo XIV stated that “rediscovering the meaning of words is perhaps one of the primary challenges of our time.” The pope’s concern...
For Part I of this article, click here. “In this call to recognize him in the poor and the suffering, we see revealed the very heart of Christ, his deepest feelings and choices, which every saint seeks to imitate.” This...
Triduum 2025 was – as always! – a whirlwind, a glorious and sleep-deprived delirium of music and liturgies and long drives everywhere. On the morning of Holy Thursday, I was able to arrive mid-Gospel at the Chrism Mass in Bridgeport....
Pope Leo XIV has asked us as Catholics to pray the Rosary daily for peace throughout the month of October. The Holy Father is not alone in singling out the Rosary as our path to peace – yet we should...
My paternal grandparents owned a home in Rosedale, Queens. Although I was there only a handful of times, I remember their Tudor house in striking detail. I can still feel the fibers of the large, oval braided rug set beneath...
In general, popes are rarely eager to set forth an agenda before the white smoke above the Sistine Chapel clears, as it were – the first six months or so of a papacy tend to be fairly quiet. The impatience...
Early yesterday morning, a note came into my Substack home page expressing utter scandal that Pope Leo said that before we are believers, we are human. I let it pass. It’s not mine to put out every fire — and...
This is a loud cry of pain from children whose dignity has been wounded. It cannot and must not leave anyone indifferent. -Pope St. John Paul II …yet how indifferent have we become. The utter tragedy of Gazan families has...
A new friend, an accomplished writer whom I met for the first time last weekend, gifted me a copy of The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. I couldn’t put it down. While I’ve studied World War II as history,...
A very brief post, but all the more significant for that: Last night in Komanda in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an all-night Eucharistic liturgy was interrupted by men armed with guns and machetes, believed to have been members...
Chris Jackson at the Substack Hiraeth in Exile has generated some controversy recently with a number of hot takes on Pope Leo; I’m focusing here on one in particular, because it epitomizes a way of understanding the Church and the world. I’ve noticed...
A learned (and acerbic) Dominican professor under whom I studied told this story: An eminent Dominican scholar, easily identifiable by his fiery red hair, was in the habit of taking his daily walk past the Jesuit house. One day, one...
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