Today in a small village in Poland Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, beatified an entire family. Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their children, massacred by the Nazis on March 24, 1944—the day before the Annunciation and the same day as St. Óscar Romero’s martyrdom thirty-six...
Reflection on the readings for Sunday, September 10, the Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time. In the last few weeks, many families have reached the end of the summer break and have returned to school. I’ve talked to many people in my community, and I’ve seen their posts on Facebook and Instagram, and many...
No more fear! no more blindness! always a mystery, but a mystery always open to our exploration, to our contemplation: “Our Father, who art in heaven”! «The first source of modern disbelief, says a famous scholar, is to be found in that illegitimate schism which gradually, from the Renaissance onwards, separated Christianity from what we could...
You may not think about it. You may not pray about it. You may not even know about it. But like it or not, if you’ve been baptized, God is calling you to be a prophet! “A prophet? Who me?” That’s right, a prophet. And yes, you! Now just because you probably don’t...
The US Papal Nuncio Christophe Pierre has been in Rome, and today Vatican News posted an interview with him about being named a cardinal, what it is like to serve as the pope’s representative in the United States, and his thoughts on the upcoming synod. Some key excerpts, taken from the Vatican...
In my article yesterday, I discussed Pope Francis’s response to a reporter’s question about the ideology-driven rhetoric of anti-synod malcontents like Cardinal Raymond Burke and the Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) movement. Sadly, he gave an example of an all-too-common effect of this, relaying a story: A few months ago, I called a...
During his in-flight press conference on the return flight from Mongolia to Rome, Pope Francis answered a question from Antonio Pelayo of Vida Nueva, regarding a recent book for which Cardinal Raymond Burke wrote the Foreword, The Synodal Process Is a Pandora’s Box. Pelayo asked, “Holy Father, you have just spoken about the...
I first came across Dr. Marcus Mescher late last year when a friend of mine shared something he posted on Twitter about an upcoming research study he worked on titled, “Measuring & Exploring Moral Injury Caused by Clergy Sexual Abuse.” Because of my own interest and research into spiritual abuse in the Catholic Church,...
A reflection on the readings of September 3, 2021 — the Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time. When available, the audio of this homily will be available here. I could be wrong, but I think one of the things we might believe is that life is easier with God. “Jesus take the wheel,” right?...
In the past, great damage was done by a failure to appreciate the close relationship existing in the Church between the exercise of charity and recourse — where circumstances and justice so require — to disciplinary sanctions. This manner of thinking — as we have learned from experience — risks leading to tolerating...
Pope Francis is in Mongolia, where it’s currently late morning on Saturday, the second day of his apostolic visit. If you are so inclined, can watch the replay of his plane landing in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar via the Vatican News YouTube Channel (the real action doesn’t start until almost five and...
Pope Francis departed Rome on a flight to Mongolia today, becoming the first pope to visit the country. During the trip, the pope will visit and encourage the tiny Catholic community (with under 1,500 members) in Mongolia — a country with a population of 3.3 million, of whom 60 percent identify as religious,...
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