BOSTON – After federal immigration officials spirited away to Texas nearly half of the 327 people arrested in a March 6 raid on a New Bedford handbag and backpack factory, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston called for “some kind of comprehensive immigration reform.” “While immigration reform is urgent, the needs of the women and...Read More
WASHINGTON – The papally mandated reform of the Legionaries of Christ may take “two or three years or even more” and require the establishment of at least three commissions, the papal delegate overseeing the reform said in an Oct. 19 letter.Read More
NEW YORK – To mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s “Life of Christ,” Doubleday is publishing a new paperback edition of the archbishop’s 688-page book on the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.Read More
Louis Stachowiak Jr. was running a little late for Mass one Sunday morning some 10 years ago and it changed his life forever. One of the ushers placed him in a pew next to the woman who would soon become his wife. The Stachowiak family has been chosen as the Knights of Columbus Family of...Read More
Despite the world’s fascination with All Things Papal, there isn’t much out there about papal humor. Which is, in a sense, entirely understandable: it takes a certain breadth of imagination, shall we say, to imagine Gregory XVI or Pius XI telling a joke (much less telling one on himself). Blessed John XXIII is an exception,...Read More
ANNAPOLIS – When Dr. Mary Ellen Hrutka attended a Catholic elementary school in Yonkers, N.Y., there were 86 students in her class and the faculty was made up almost entirely of Franciscan Sisters of Baltimore. Some five decades later, Catholic education has changed dramatically. Religious sisters, priests and brothers now make up a small minority...Read More
VATICAN CITY – Specific synod suggestions for a common Catholic-Orthodox celebration of Easter, wider authority for Eastern Catholic patriarchs – including participation in conclaves to elect a pope - and the need for local dialogue with Muslims and Jews were repeated in the midterm report of the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East.Read More
WASHINGTON – Many perspectives have been used over the years as the basis for Scripture study, but a new Bible study using ongoing genocide as its basis may be a first.Read More
The 100 ‘Red Hot Mamas’ who gather at Good Samaritan Hospital, Baltimore, one Wednesday each month know exactly what it’s like to feel the heat. That’s why the women find it helpful to come together for the monthly seminar which focuses on issues before, during and after menopause. The menopause seminars have become such a...Read More
Two postcard portraits of the recently-beatified John Henry Newman have graced my office for years. One is a miniature painted by Sir William Charles Ross in 1845, the year of Newman’s reception into the Catholic Church. The second, by Emmeline Dean, gives us the aged cardinal, a year before his death in 1890. Between those...Read More
CHICAGO – St. Monica Catholic Academy in Chicago looks like plenty of other Catholic schools: clean and neat, with lots of student-created artwork on the walls.Read More