Two hundred years after St. Elizabeth Ann Seton arrived in Emmitsburg to found a ministry of education, hundreds of Catholics will commemorate her entry into town as they witness a live Aug. 2 reenactment complete with a horse-drawn Conestoga Wagon. The special event is one of the highlights of a weekend of bicentennial celebrations July...Read More

JERUSALEM – A Catholic Palestinian legislator praised the new Palestinian Cabinet and said it was likely to succeed. “This is a good start,” said Bernard Sabella, a Fatah member of the Palestinian Parliament. “In effect it is a government which combines the more practical and pragmatic elements of Fatah, the independents and second-rank Hamas” members....Read More

The requirement to participate in a March 15 commencement of a Catholic Charities program was to stay out of prison for two years. But for the 23 graduates of the Baltimore-based Maryland Re-entry Partnership, the ceremony celebrated a new outlook on life. “If you told me three years ago I wouldn’t be back in prison...Read More

Through the good graces of Bill and MaryAnn Albaugh I was invited to give the invocation before the Towson Fourth of July Parade. I received a number of requests for that prayer, so I thought I would reprint it, along with some additional commentary.Read More

ROCKFORD, Ill. – Her first job was a decapitation.Read More

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Pope Benedict XVI’s top diplomat at the United Nations said the Vatican wants to normalize relations with China, which it sees as a major way of advancing religious freedom and fostering unity among Chinese Catholics. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s U.N. nuncio, expressed hope that a papal letter to Chinese Catholics to...Read More

RIVERVIEW, Mich. – There’s an alternative to fish for some Michigan Catholics abstaining from meat on Fridays in Lent – muskrat. The custom of eating muskrat on Ash Wednesday and Fridays in Lent apparently goes back to the early 1800s, the time of Father Gabriel Richard, an early missionary in Michigan whose flock included French-Canadian...Read More

WASHINGTON – A U.S. House committee’s refusal to let an amendment on restoring the Mexico City policy go to the floor of the chamber eliminated a chance for debate on “an issue of serious concern to many Americans,” said a Republican congressman from Arizona.Read More