During his audience today, Pope Francis had some consoling words for persecuted Christians in Iraq, and also spoke beautifully about the Church’s role as a mother to us all: “We are not orphans! We have a mom, a mother” in the church and in Mary, he said. “The birth of Jesus from the womb of Mary, in fact, is the prelude to the rebirth of every Christian in the womb of the church,” he said.That is why a person never... Read more
From the CNEWA blog One-to-One: From Iraq, we received a heart-breaking letter from Sister Maria Hanna, superior general of the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena, an Iraqi community of women religious with whom we collaborate closely. “We entered the fourth week of displacement. Yet, there is nothing promising at all,” she writes of the displacement of more than a hundred thousand Christian refugees from their homes in the Nineveh Plain of northern Iraq. The Kurds, she writes, allowed... Read more
From Catholic News Service: Kara Jackson, a 16-year-old altar server from Holy Family Parish in Middletown, Ohio is on a quest to serve at Mass in all 50 states.So far she has served at liturgies in 18 states after recently serving at a morning Mass at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford.Kara’s endeavor is a journey of faith that began in 2013. She has traveled with her family to serve at Masses in states as far west as Nevada,... Read more
Details: A gay group of employees from NBC will march in next year’s New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade behind their own banner, a source with knowledge of the ongoing parade controversy has told the Irish Voice. On Wednesday, September 3, at a reception at the New York Athletic Club, Cardinal Timothy Dolan will be named as the grand marshal of the 254th St. Patrick’s Day parade, set to step off on Tuesday, March 17. In a historic move aimed at defusing... Read more
This time, in Michigan: A former chemistry teacher at a Catholic, all-girls high school in Bloomfield Hills said she was fired before the semester started because of her “non-traditional” pregnancy. Barbara Webb, 33, of Madison Heights said she’d worked for Marian High School for nine years, also coaching volleyball and softball and serving as student-government moderator. She is gay but said she believes the public, visible nature of a pregnancy led to her firing. She learned she was pregnant in June, told... Read more
This unusual new media venture was unveiled today, and The Neiman Journalism Lab looks at what lies behind this new website devoted to “all things Catholic”: Looking at the newly launched Catholic news site Crux, you’ll find plenty of stories on the travels and exploits of Pope Francis. This makes sense — he’s the head of the church and easily one of the most charismatic leaders operating on the world’s stage. What you won’t readily find is an indication of who or... Read more
Details from The New York Times: The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has beheaded Steven J. Sotloff, the second American executed by the Islamic militant group, and posted a video of it on the Internet, the SITE Intelligence Group, a research organization that tracks jihadist web postings, said Tuesday. The execution of Mr. Sotloff, 31, came despite pleas from his mother aimed directly at ISIS’s top leader seeking mercy for her son, a freelance journalist who was captured in... Read more
And what a journey it is: I was raised Jewish. My father and his siblings were the first American generation born to descendants of Polish and Austrian Jewish immigrants. My mother was not born Jewish. Her motherwas Catholic and her father Episcopalian. My mother’s mother, only sixteen years of age when she gave birth to my mother, saw to it that she was baptized in the Roman Catholic Rite. On the way to St. Mark’s parish, where my mother was... Read more
From AP: Diego Maradona and Roberto Baggio were among a host of former soccer stars who played in an interreligious charity match backed by Pope Francis on Monday night. The Argentine pope, an avid soccer fan, did not attend the match but had an audience with both teams earlier in the day and also broadcast a message on the big screens at Rome’s Olympic Stadium ahead of kickoff. The idea arose during an audience former Argentina great Javier Zanetti had... Read more
If you’ve been itching for an edition of these prayers for your e-reader, the wait is over. Universalis in July published an edition of The Liturgy of the Hours for the Kindle Paperwhite. (Various editions for the Kindle Fire have been around for a while; I’ve used both the iBreviary and Divine Office apps, and they’re both very good.) But if you don’t have a tablet, or the ability to use apps, this could be the next best thing. The pages... Read more
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