Blog

Image: Saint Clare | original painting for the Poor Clares in Cincinnati, Ohio Saint of the Day for August 11 (July 16, 1194 – August 11, 1253) Saint Clare of Assisi’s Story One of the more sugary movies made about Francis of Assisi pictures Clare as a golden-haired beauty floating through sun-drenc...

VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV has urged Catholics to prioritize attending Sunday Mass, warning that active participation in the Eucharist cannot be replaced by virtual gatherings.“I urge everyone to seek the best possible conditions so that even those who are unable to take time off work on Sundays ma...

Pope Leo XIV is a pope of several firsts: the first American pope, the first to be an Augustinian, and the first in modern times to have done overseas missionary work.He is also the first pontiff in nearly 50 years to have studied and worked as a canon lawyer, holding a doctorate in canon law from t...

The Venerable Archbishop Sheen, soon to be known as Blessed Fulton Sheen, was a man of many gifts. We should add, however, that his gifts were lavish and reflected a most generous God. He was a clear-headed philosopher, a brilliant essayist, and possessed an illuminating way with words. He was not q...

Jesus walking on water and calling Peter to meet Him outside the boat—recorded in Matthew 14:22-33—is one of the most recognizable and memorable episodes in all the Gospels. It sticks in our minds, certainly, because it is an amazing miracle. It stands out also, I think, because so many of us identi...

Human beings of every generation have faced a particular direction for worship. This is true of most world religions of documented history. Muslims pray toward Mecca because it is the Qibla—the unified direction of worship commanded by Allah in the Quran. The ancient Jews would pray toward Jerusalem...

The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. I was reflecting recently on the many faces of sadness, grief, and sorrow during the recently concluded 2026 soccer World Cup. We saw grown men...

For as long as I can remember, I have loved St. Francis and St. Clare. When we were planning a trip to Italy, I convinced my husband to make Assisi one of our stops. It was every bit as beautiful and peaceful as people describe. But the greatest gift that I received from that trip was the realizatio...

This summer marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the martyrdom of Bl. Stanley Rother, the missionary priest from Oklahoma who was gunned down in 1981 by a government-backed death squad in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. Bl. Stanley had served as missionary to the indigenous Tz’utujil for thirteen years...

An estimated 80,000 people flooded across the border from Morocco to Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in Morocco, in a matter of hours on July 30, overwhelming the city of just under 83,000 inhabitants.It is not entirely clear what caused the mass border crossing. The vast majority of the undocumented migra...

A Baltimore deacon charged with sexually soliciting a minor was discovered in a partnership between local sheriffs and a streaming predator investigation television program.Kenneth Goedeke. Credit: Harford County Sheriff’s Office. Subscribe now“We heard that there are rumors that Chris Hansen of ‘Ta...

Two Italian bishops have intervened in the last week to cancel funerals for senior Freemasons scheduled to be held in Catholic churches. The interventions are the latest in a series of moves by bishops around the world to reinforce the Church’s centuries-old opposition to Freemasonry and its canonic...