From The Catholic Herald: Pope Francis has revealed that he prays to the English martyr St Thomas More every day. In his annual end of year address to Vatican officials the Pope said that there is a prayer to the saint for good humour which he prays daily saying that a healthy dose of humour in our daily lives is very beneficial. Pope Francis also outlined “15 diseases of the Curia” which included the diseases of mental and spiritual petrification;... Read more
Rocco, as usual, has the first word: The Pope is slated to flip Bishop Christopher Coyne – the Boston-born, 56 year-old auxiliary of Indianapolis and incoming chair of USCCB Communications – back to New England as the tenth bishop of Burlington and head of Vermont’s 125,000-member statewide church. Confirmed by two Whispers ops, the move fittingly places the US church’s most digitally-engaged prelate in a charge with a booming tech economy – and the young adults who come with it – but likewise drops him into... Read more
In New York City yesterday: NYPD officers salute as the bodies of their slain brothers, Wenjin Liu and Rafael Ramos, leave the hospital. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord… God have mercy on us. Read more
From the AP: The key role Pope Francis played encouraging talks between Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro left fractures among his flock in South Florida, where many older Roman Catholics equate the Castro brothers with the devil. Many Catholics worldwide have expressed pride in seeing Francis stirring hopes of progress in communist Cuba, but some Cuban-Americans say their spiritual leader betrayed them. “I’m still Catholic till the day I die,” said Efrain Rivas, a 53-year-old maintenance man in... Read more
I’ve never heard of something like this before. From Vatican Insider: “This is a gift for you from the Pope on the occasion of his birthday,” volunteers and Swiss Guards were quoted as saying to hundreds of homeless people, as they handed out batches of sleeping bags to them yesterday. The sleeping bags were distributed on a minibus, which left the Vatican at 6 pm and went around Rome looking for homeless people who needed them. The quality bags had a... Read more
We hear it again and again this time of year: “I can’t believe it’s almost Christmas.” It actually started before Thanksgiving. You’d hear staff here in the rectory saying, “I can’t believe it’s almost Advent.” And here we are, four weeks later. Where did the time go? It seems like it gets shorter every year. We see it coming for months, but we’re never prepared for it. And there is never enough time for planning, shopping, mailing, decorating, baking—it may... Read more
Just when you think you’ve seen it all…Elvis Priestly. Read more
A delicious piece of prose from Joseph Bottum: I love the elegant Christmas-dining pictures in Bon Appétit. The holiday dishes and cutlery in the pricey Williams-Sonoma catalogue. The winter ornaments and widgets arranged so beautifully by Restoration Hardware. The season’s advertisements in the New Yorker, the Sunday Times magazine, House Beautiful, and all the rest—clean, refined, sophisticatedly simple expressions of upper-middle-class taste, displayed in magazines for the rest of the middle class to gaze at in wonder. To aspire to in hope. To ache for in greed. Not... Read more
From The National Catholic Reporter: The leader of the main group of the world’s Franciscans has written members of his order around the world informing them that their financial stability is at “grave risk” because of “questionable financial activities” undertaken by staffers of the order’s Roman administrative offices. Because of the questionable activities the order’s general treasurer has resigned and ecclesiastical and civil authorities have been called upon for help, writes Franciscan Fr. Michael Perry, the minister general of the... Read more
From the Committee to Protect Journalists: The Committee to Protect Journalists identified 220 journalists in jail around the world in 2014, an increase of nine from 2013. The tally marks the second-highest number of journalists in jail since CPJ began taking an annual census of imprisoned journalists in 1990, and highlights a resurgence of authoritarian governments in countries such as China, Ethiopia, Burma, and Egypt. China’s use of anti-state charges and Iran’s revolving door policy in imprisoning reporters, bloggers, editors, and... Read more
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