The pontiff baptized 28 babies today to mark the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus—and delivered a brief homily that evidently was interrupted, of course, by crying babies. The text, in part:  You have asked for faith: The Church gives faith to your children through Baptism. And you have the task of making it grow, protecting it so that it becomes a witness to everyone. This is the meaning of this ceremony. This is all I wanted to tell you:... Read more

These pictures popped up on Facebook today. [img attachment=”132918″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”15895192_10154348722889397_6383808350817967775_n” /] As OSV noted in 2014: Johnson was on the brink of a shining time in his young life when he was diagnosed with incurable and inoperable brain cancer. He was 24 with excellent career prospects as a Naval officer.  Johnson entered the seminary to pursue the priesthood — a call he’d heard since the age of 19. Patients with his type of cancer are typically given 18 months... Read more

Chances are, you’ll be hearing it this weekend. Here’s the story behind it: “We Three Kings“, also known as “We Three Kings of Orient Are” or “The Quest of the Magi“, is a Christmas carol that was written by John Henry Hopkins, Jr. in 1857. At the time of composing the carol, Hopkins served as the rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and he wrote the carol for a Christmas pageant in New York City. Many versions of... Read more

The pastor who was branded a charlatan a few days back has responded to her critics: President-elect Donald Trump’s longtime religious adviser, Paula White, is firing back at critics who have called her a heretic and questioned her personal finances and romantic history. “I have been called a heretic, an apostate, an adulterer, a charlatan, and an addict. It has been falsely reported that I once filed for bankruptcy and — my personal favorite — that I deny the Trinity!”... Read more

From The Washington Post:  Mainline Protestant churches are in trouble: A 2015 report by the Pew Research Center found that these congregations, once a mainstay of American religion, are now shrinking by about 1 million members annually. Fewer members not only means fewer souls saved, a frightening thought for some clergy members, but also less income for churches, further ensuring their decline. Faced with this troubling development, clergy members have made various efforts to revive church attendance. It was almost 20... Read more

And not everyone is thrilled:  Last week’s opening of a McDonald’s in a Vatican-owned property just around the corner from St. Peter’s Square has been both welcomed and decried by Rome’s locals. Some Romans have expressed joy on social media at the new restaurant, noting that the area around the Vatican is filled with overpriced restaurants catering to tourists, and suggesting the McDonald’s could actually be more discreet. Others have worried about changes to the area’s cultural identity. Cardinal Elio... Read more

The video above shows what sparked the protest. Details, from RNS:  After political outcry and personal threats, an Italian priest has replaced a Christmas Nativity scene that critics said depicted Mary, the mother of Jesus, with a Muslim body covering. The Rev. Franco Corbo, a 76-year-old pastor from the southern town of Potenza, was the subject of a nationwide backlash on TV and social media and received hundreds of abusive telephone calls at his parish as a result of his... Read more

From The Wall Street Journal (subscription required): When French presidential contender François Fillon marked the Feast of the Assumption last summer, he attended Mass at Solesmes Abbey, a Benedictine monastery known for resisting the anticlerical purges of the French Revolution. The trip, coming just weeks after the slaying of a Catholic priest in a terror attack, didn’t go unnoticed. “He doesn’t hide the fact that he’s Catholic,” said Christophe Billan, head of Sens Commun, a grass-roots movement comprising thousands of... Read more

From CNS:  The church in India’s Kerala state has formed a group of priests, nuns and laypeople to respond to the pastoral needs of transgender people, reported ucanews.com. Formed in Cochin under the aegis of Pro-Life Support, a global social service movement within the church, the ministry is significant as it is one of the few outreach programs for the transgender community by the institutional church in India. “The whole church has a big role to play,” said Father Paul... Read more