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Women think that they are making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idols merely. You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage to come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraid that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now.  — Oscar Wilde, An I...

From the outside, the Madre di Misericordia clinic may not seem like much. In fact, it’s easy to miss the clinic entirely.Located just steps from the security lines where tourists and pilgrims wait to enter St. Peter’s Basilica, the entrance to the clinic is modest enough that a passerby could easil...

Pope Leo XIV appointed seven new members to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Church’s highest canonical court of appeal, on July 25, including the first three non-bishops ever appointed as members of the tribunal.Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome. Public domain.The appointments b...

Brazil has more Catholics than any other country in the world. So it’s not surprising that it’s producing a striking number of potential 21st-century saints.Padre Léo, pictured in 2006. Screenshot from the @cancaonovaplay YouTube channel.Among the figures whose causes are progressing is Padre Léo, w...

With the school year approaching, a challenge looms for Catholic teenagers across America — the dreaded post-conference spiritual crash.Eddie Cotter speaks with teenagers at a youth group event. Credit: Jack Figge.After experiencing powerful spiritual moments from jampacked summers of Steubenville C...

Pope Leo XIV approved the union of two more Irish dioceses under a single bishop Wednesday.A map highlighting Ireland’s dioceses of Ferns, left, and Ossory. Sheila1988 via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).The Vatican announced July 29 that Bishop Gerard Nash, who has led the Diocese of Ferns since 2021, wou...

The Vatican is participating in the international art exhibition “La Biennale di Venezia” in Italy for the fourth consecutive year. A senior Vatican official explained the Vatican’s support for the exhibition and its recent focus on contemporary art.Irish Bishop Paul Tighe, secretary of the Culture...

Pope Leo XIV encouraged young people to use social media and artificial intelligence (AI) prudently because “they can immerse us in an unreal world.”In a video message to participants at the 2026 Halleluya Festival in Fortaleza, Brazil, the pontiff proposed St. Carlo Acutis, known for using digital...

The Vatican has urged the United Nations (U.N.) to include the homeless in efforts to create sustainable cities, stating that the “persistence of homelessness should trouble the conscience of the international community.”The Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the U.N. made these remarks i...

The Vatican will launch its first conference of Christians and Confucians to expand the Catholic Church’s outreach to the Asian ethical tradition.The Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue will hold the colloquium “Dialogue on the Contribution of Christianity and Confucianism to an Ideal Society: New...

If we seek to learn more about the mother of Jesus, then perhaps the place to begin is by taking a closer look at the family from which she came. Unfortunately, we have almost no information about the parents of our Blessed Mother Mary. In fact, any “historical” information we have comes from a non-...

Have you noticed that in a garden it is easier to experience God than nearly anywhere else? Praying while sitting in, looking at, or working in a garden is a direct connection to our Creator. Why is that? I suspect it’s because it’s a return to the Garden of Eden. The close relationship that God int...