Today is the feast of Pope St. John Paul II, who was pope from 1978 until his death in 2005. As the pope who served at the precipice of the third millennium and who declared the Jubilee year in 2000, his words about the Church in the future are worth revisiting with regularity:...
Today marks exactly two years since a young Austrian convert to the Catholic faith, Alexander Tschugguel, stole five wooden figures of pregnant indigenous women from the Amazon from Santa Maria in Traspontina church in Rome in the early morning hours. Kathryn Joyce, in an article for Type Investigations and Vanity Fair, described what...
This past Sunday, October 17, the diocesan phase of the Synodal Process—already begun in Rome on October 10th—opened around the world. Although reports this week show that only about half of US dioceses were prepared to begin this diocesan phase, many did open the “Synod on Synodality” with a Mass celebrated by the...
What does your bishop have to say about climate change? For US Catholics, the most typical answer to this question is either “not much” or “nothing at all.” According to an article published today in Environmental Research Letters by University of Wisconsin-Madison doctoral student Emily E. Burke and Creighton University professors Daniel R....
After switching from German, my language of choice for four years in high school, and taking Italian 101 to fulfill my college language requirement my freshman year, I spent my sophomore year in college in Rome. As an undecided liberal arts major with a large group of studio art and architecture majors, I...
On October 13, Pope Francis gave his approval for the beatification of Pope John Paul I, who is best known for having one of the shortest pontificates in history: just 33 days. We have to look back to 1605 to find a shorter pontificate, the 27-day papacy of Leo XI. Pope Francis, in...
Homily for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B 2021 – Fr. Satish Joseph This homily is composed using the Preparatory Documents for the Synod and from Pope Francis’s homily for the inauguration of the Synodal process. “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission.” Does this sound like Church jargon...
“The same reasoning holds in the case of some persons who are bent on the restoration of all the ancient rites and ceremonies indiscriminately. The liturgy of the early ages is most certainly worthy of all veneration. But ancient usage must not be esteemed more suitable and proper, either in its own right...
Last night I watched the EWTN program The World Over. In one segment, Raymond Arroyo brought together his “papal posse,” Robert Royal of The Catholic Thing and Fr. Gerald Murray of the Archdiocese of New York. Once again, Arroyo failed to mention Pope Francis’s comments about EWTN’s relentless attacks on the pope being...
On Sunday, Pope Francis opened the two-year process for the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops with a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. The diocesan phase of the Synod is set to begin this Sunday, October 17. In his homily, he asked, “Are we prepared for the adventure of this...
Pope Francis is sometimes accused of being a “Marxist.” In particular, the following paragraphs from Fratelli Tutti drew some criticism (emphasis added): 119. In the first Christian centuries, a number of thinkers developed a universal vision in their reflections on the common destination of created goods. This led them to realize that if...
When I was young, one of my favorite places in the house was the cushy, swivel chair right next to the built-in shelves in our living room. Because right at eye-level were my most favorite books including the World Book Encyclopedia (the dinosaur predecessor to Wikipedia for all of you digital natives.) My...
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