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The Vatican has ordered an investigation in the Diocese of Baton Rouge, over allegations that the Bishop Michael Duca discouraged a whistleblower from calling the police, after a local priest allegedly admitted to sexual contact with minors.St. Joseph Cathedral, Baton Rouge. Credit: Farragutful/wiki...

Welcome to Starting Seven, The Pillar’s daily newsletter.I’m Luke Coppen and I aim to guide you each weekday morning to the most interesting Catholic news and commentary. Read more

Pillar paid subscribers can listen to Ed read this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DRHappy Friday friends,And a happy first anniversary to our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, long may he reign.Thinking back to the moment last year when Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost was announced from the loggia with th...

Yonder’s a work now, of that famous youthThe Urbinate who died five years ago.(’Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.)Well, I can fancy how he did it all,Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,Above and through his art—for it gives way— from “Andre...

Usually my husband takes the family trash to the dump, but he was sick, so I made the drive. I actually kind of enjoy this chore. Trash gets hurled into one dark hole of a bin, but there are several others waiting to receive plastic, glass, metal, and paper. What happens next, I don’t really know; b...

Several Venezuelan bishops decried Friday the Venezuelan regime’s admission that a political prisoner died under law enforcement custody in July 2025.Our Lady of the Valley Basilica in Margarita Island, Venezuela. Credit: Wilfirdor / Wikimedia CC0.Subscribe nowOn May 7, the Ministry of Penitentiary...

England’s Bishop Marcus Stock is currently in the unusual position of overseeing not one but three dioceses.Bishop Marcus Stock of Leeds, England, at his episcopal ordination on Nov. 13, 2014. Credit: © Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk.The 64-year-old has served since 2014 as the Bishop of Leeds, a histori...

Early in my clinical training, one of my first patients told me something I have never forgotten: “my family is cursed—and so am I.” He described a history marked by abuse, addiction, and abandonment. Patterns that had repeated across generations. “It will always be like this,” he said, and so a lif...

Nothing says jazz like New Orleans, and nothing says Catholic like the Mass. So, a jazz Mass on Good Shepherd Sunday in New Orleans at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and International St. Jude Shrine was a blessing on many levels. I had traveled from North Dakota with a son and his family. All That Ja...

A few months back I wrote a piece called “Influencers vs. Saints.” The whole point was simple. Teaching the Faith is not a hobby for the spiritually unformed. We are in a weird stretch of Church history where anyone with a smartphone can position themselves as an authority or teacher on the Catholic...

I passed through the metal detector at the Las Vegas Airport without incident.  No alarm complained about my passage.  While waiting for my wife, who was the inconvenient recipient of a more thorough random check, I turned to the attendant and told her that I was surprised to pass through the metal...

We’re all here to learn how to love. Life is a school of love. The things that happen to you in life are meant to help you learn how to love. The people who cross your path in life are meant to help you learn how to love, and you’re meant to help them learn how to love, too. We’re all on a journey b...