A Canadian artist has put a powerful and heartbreaking perspective on the tragedy of school shootings: Canadian cartoonist Pia Guerra, like many around the world, was shocked and dismayed when she turned on the television to find out a lone gunman had killed 17 people and wounded dozens more in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida last week. However, it was the heroic story of the school’s assistant football coach Aaron Feis, who died while using his... Read more

Details:  Tulsa Police are looking for whoever vandalized Saint Augustine Catholic Church on Apache near North Lewis Saturday. No one was injured but the front window has been shattered and so was a statue of The Virgin Mary. Wenona Hurd has been going to the church for more than 20 years. She was on her way inside to help set up when she saw the broken glass and called police. Read on. Other reports indicate the vandals used the statue... Read more

From The New York Times:  A man carrying a knife and a hunting rifle opened fire on worshipers on Sunday at an Orthodox church in Kizlyar, in the Dagestan region of Russia, killing at least five people and wounding several others, according to a Russian state news agency. The gunman shouted, “Allahu akbar,” and began firing, a priest told local the news media. Churchgoers said they had prevented more casualties by closing the door to the church and stopping the... Read more

Our musical interlude this Sunday, the first of Lent, is sung by the City Choir of Washington at St. Luke’s Catholic Church in McLean, Virginia. It’s the Communion hymn being sung by our choir this weekend. Wikipedia notes: “Ave verum corpus” is a short Eucharistic hymn that has been set to music by various composers. It dates from the 14th century and has been attributed to Pope Innocent VI. During the Middle Ages it was sung at the elevation of the host during the consecration. It was also used frequently during Benediction... Read more

Last Wednesday, while most of us were busy getting ashes or buying last-minute Valentine’s Day flowers, something horrific happened in Parkland, Florida. As everyone now knows, a high school there became the scene of a massacre—the worst of its kind since Sandy Hook. The world has been reeling ever since. The stories are heartbreaking. The football coach, who dove in front of students and took the bullets—and gave his life. The students who frantically texted their parents while cowering in... Read more

Evidently, she violated a court order regarding “decisions concerning religion” connected with child custody. Details:  Kendra Stocks got her daughter baptized. Now she’s in the Mecklenburg jail. In a head-on collision between matters of church and state, the Charlotte woman began serving a week behind bars Friday after being found in contempt of court. Her punishment stems from the clandestine christening of her child in August 2016 – one day after a Mecklenburg judge gave full custody to the girl’s... Read more

Details:  It is a special day for the Coptic community of Minya province, Upper Egypt, as a new church was inaugurated this morning in Al-Our village in remembrance of 20 Egyptian Copts and one Ghanaian Christian beheaded by the so-called Islamic State on the Libyan coast three years ago on Thursday. In the early morning, a mass was held at the new Church of the Martyrs of Faith and Homeland by Bishop Bevnotious. The church was packed with Christians who travelled to... Read more

  Yes. The host of TV’s “Extra”—and, to many of us, legendary for playing A.C. Slater on “Saved by the Bell”—posted this image and message on Twitter yesterday. [img attachment=”280001″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” /]   Read more

From a homily I delivered last fall, following the shootings in Las Vegas:  Just last Wednesday, Pope Francis in his General Audience put it this way: “A real Christian,” he said, “is …convinced by the power of the Resurrection that no evil is infinite, no night is without end, no person is permanently in error, no hatred is stronger than love.” Hope persists. Even after violence in the vineyard. Hope persists. So does faith. St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians... Read more

Details:  Pope Francis revealed in a meeting with confreres of his Jesuit order last month that he meets with survivors of sexual abuse on a nearly weekly basis, according to a newly released transcript of the encounter. In a Jan. 19 question and answer session during his visit to Peru, the text of which was published for the first time Feb. 15 by Italian Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, the pope said the Catholic Church must hear from those who... Read more