On Wednesday, following the unexpected death of Australian Cardinal George Pell, Vatican journalist Sandro Magister revealed that Pell was “Demos,” the author of an anti-papal memo that Magister published back in March 2022, claiming at the time that it was...
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46). Pope Francis’s homily today for the funeral Mass of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, was a meditation on these, the last words of Christ. He said that Christ offers an invitation...
As reported by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the last words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI were “Lord, I love you.” These final words uttered by Benedict were an authentic testimony to the Christian theology of love that was a constant theme...
We, the admirers of Pope Benedict XVI, will always assert that, rather than “God’s Rottweiler,” our beloved Holy Father was a shy and gentle intellectual, who administered doctrinal discipline with the precept that correction is one of the Spiritual Works...
As we continue to celebrate and reflect upon Pope Benedict’s life and legacy, I thought I would share five quotes that surprised me and which have had a profound impact on my life and my understanding of the faith. Each...
Today, my heart is heavy. It is heavy, because one person close to my heart has died – and along with him, a piece of my life story. Besides my blood relatives and God the Father, this man was the...
A few days ago, Fr. Casey Cole, OFM, tweeted that, “If the story of Christmas doesn’t shake you, you might be missing the point.” He linked to a video that conveyed the familiar scold that, instead of focusing on gifts...
Our Holy Father Francis has written two exhortations, Evangelii Gaudium (2013) and Gaudete et Exultate (2018), that warn against two of the most pervasive and corrosive heresies in the 2,000 years of the Church: Neo-Pelagianism and Gnosticism. The pope, sensing...
One of the themes most emphasized by the documents of Vatican II was the importance of the People of God. Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, has 41 references to the People of God. This is the subject...
In the world of improv comedy, there is a practice called “yes-and.” In an improv session, if something strange or shocking or difficult to understand is mooted, the next person in the session does not resist or attempt to backpedal...
[Author’s note: Conservative Catholics sometimes argue that Pope Francis puts too much emphasis on the social dimension of Catholic teaching; they worry that such an emphasis on the communal will distort the Church’s moral teachings. In reality, however, the Church...
There are, in every parish, those who can be relied upon to be always late for Mass. They are sometimes referred to as the “Gloria crowd.” My deacon in one parish was a retired military man, whose adulation for the...
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