Two beautiful paintings of the Blessed Mother were blessed at Our Lady of Grace (OLG) Church on the eve of the Immaculate Conception. They depict the Assumption and the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and are now located high above either side of the church’s doors upon exiting.
The lights finally came back on at the San Damiano Mission Catholic Church after nearly nine months when the pandemic began. Parishioners were welcomed back with masked smiles and open arms as Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio celebrated the reopening Mass, which took place on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.
Protestors representing ethnic minority groups under the control of China gathered Dec. 10 near the United Nations headquarters to assail China’s government for alleged crackdowns on friends and family in their homelands. Religious freedom was among their top concerns.
With a helping hand from the Knights of Columbus, the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Solace dedicated a new statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe in a ceremony on Dec. 12. The previous statue was seriously damaged by a vandal who toppled it from its perch and threw it to the ground on Sept. 11,
A gunman was fatally shot by police on the front steps of St. John the Divine Cathedral in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, Dec. 13, after the 52-year-old man began firing two semi automatic handguns just before 4 p.m., at the end of the church’s public outdoor Christmas Choir concert scheduled that afternoon.
Brian Brock is Professor of Moral and Practical Theology at the University of Aberdeen. He is also a husband and father of three children, including Adam, who is 16, who has Down Syndrome and autism. He has written a wide range of scholarly essays on themes related to disability and is a Managing Editor of the “Journal of Religion and Disability.”
Calling the Dec. 10 federal execution of Brandon Bernard an injustice carried out by the country’s criminal justice system, Sister Helen Prejean urged Americans to speak up to stop a series of upcoming executions in the final weeks of the Trump administration.
The Vatican health service will begin vaccinating employees and Vatican citizens against COVID-19 using the Pfizer vaccine, the director of the Vatican health service told Vatican News.
The 220 attendees also paid loving honor to the late Father Jorge Ortiz-Garay, who died in March of COVID-19.
The signals were clear at the start of the pandemic. No Masses, no offertory income. No offertory income, nothing to assess by the diocese. Nothing in the diocese to assess, reduced revenue to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
