A press release from my friends at the Saint Pio Foundation: The Saint Pio Foundation is proud to present the 2nd “Saint Pio Award Ceremony,” which will take place at The Naval Heritage Center (701 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC 20004) on Friday, May 27, 2016, at 12:00 PM (noon). A cocktail reception will be followed by the award ceremony. The Saint Pio Award has been established to recognize the selfless and outstanding contribution of those individuals who have strongly... Read more

From our sister site, For Her:  Whether you can sing like Adele or can’t carry a tune, it’s hard to deny that the act of singing itself is fun. Who can resist singing in the shower, or humming your favorite new Taylor Swift song while cleaning or cooking? It makes everyday tasks more enjoyable. And that joy often increases when we sing together in a group setting—whether in an organized choir, in the pews at church, in the bleachers at... Read more

From NCR:  Fr. James J. Grogan is running late for a morning appointment, and when he gets to the rectory he is profusely apologetic and ready with an explanation. “Not every newly-ordained priest has to help his son change a tire,” he says. But so it is with Grogan, ordained in 2015 for the Diocese of Trenton and now the associate at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Moorestown, N.J. At 59, his journey is unusual for a newly-ordained... Read more

The picture is the iconic image of a Vietnamese girl, naked, burned by napalm as she runs down a road. The girl is Kim Phuc, and her life could have ended in that moment. It didn’t. She has taken an extraordinary journey and has not let that searing moment in her life define her: Despite the fear that no one would want her, Kim is now married and has two sons. She says her conversion from the Cao Dai religion to... Read more

This is worth a thousand words—maybe, in fact, a million. This comes from Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish in Astoria, New York. The priest is the pastor, Msgr. Sean Ogle. At a moment when people are dissecting the intricacies of canon law and parsing what is or is not heresy and seeking to define, or redefine, every syllable and punctuation mark the Holy Father used in Amoris Laetitia, let’s just take a moment to take a deep breath, gaze at... Read more

Details:  Celebrated actor Mark Rylance is to reteam with director Steven Spielberg to star in his next movie The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. Rylance, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, will star as Pope Pius IX. The film will tell the true story of a Jewish boy in Italy in 1858 who is taken from his parents, raised as a Catholic and later becomes a priest. Filming will start when Spielberg finishes work on... Read more

He was instrumental in preserving the site of Christ’s baptism in Jordan, and has now reportedly stepped in to help preserve another sacred Christian site. Details: “His Majesty King Abdullah II has issued a Royal Benefaction (makruma) to provide for the restoration of Jesus’ Tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, at His Majesty’s personal expense.” The news was announced by Jordanian press agency Petra, which says that the Hashemite Court sent an official letter to the Greek... Read more

Here’s an interesting take I haven’t seen elsewhere, from Haaretz: Francis’ “Amoris Laetitia” (Latin for “The Joy of Love”) has gotten a lot of attention for its generally more lenient approach to divorce and gay marriage, but perhaps more significant to non-Catholics is the pope’s decrees on interfaith marriage – an issue with which the Jewish world is currently grappling as well. In the 256-page Church document, Francis deals separately with the issues of marriage between Catholics and non-Catholic Christians,... Read more

Who knew? Songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez had it all figured out: So he’s a bit of a fixer upper, but this we’re certain of You can fix this fixer upper with a little bit of love From “Frozen,” some musical wisdom that reminds us that every one is a “fixer upper.” Maybe those who feel otherwise should just, er, let it go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGKltmWYTM Photo: YouTube Read more