The unique pastries sfingi and zeppole are back in bakery showcases in time for the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19. The feast this year will occur during the “Year of St. Joseph,” which began on Dec. 8 when Pope Francis called for a year-long celebration of the canonized carpenter.
Coronavirus
A Year Into Lockdown, Church in Netherlands Fears Permanent Decline
One year after the first ecclesial lockdown came into effect in the Netherlands, “ordinary parish life is partly falling away” and the crisis is accelerating the already existing problem of secularization.
American Rescue Plan Praised for Helping ‘The Most Vulnerable Among Us’
The American Rescue Plan is “an extraordinarily practical way to help the American people,” New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan said in a statement March 11, the same day President Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package into law.
Playing The ‘COVID Card’
We’ve seen the headlines for more than a year now — “Impact of coronavirus lockdowns on mental health;” “Is the US ready for the mental health crisis that will follow?;” “Kids are not okay” — and the studies are countless. But what about the subset of the population that actually likes the separation?
Pandemic Has Presented Challenges to Provide Special Education
When the World Health Organization declared a global COVID-19 pandemic March 11, 2020, the world shuddered, then shuttered.
Catholic Nonprofit Will Honor Women Religious Who Died of COVID-19
Chicago-based Catholic Extension plans to help 1,000 women religious with grants in memory of a group of sisters who died in late December of COVID-19 in Elm Grove, Wisconsin.
It’s ‘Unconscionable’ COVID-19 Relief Package Doesn’t Prevent Abortion Funding, Denounce USCCB Chairmen
Hours after the Biden administration’s COVID-19 relief plan passed Wednesday, several U.S. Bishops Conference chairmen called it “unconscionable” that the bill didn’t include protections against taxpayer funding of abortion.
USCCB Administrative Committee’s Pastoral Message Marks Year of Pandemic
U.S. life has “dramatically changed” due to the yearlong pandemic, and alongside it, racial injustices and political divisions have shaken the nation, yet there is “comfort in God’s promise,” the U.S. bishops’ Administrative Committee said in a March 9 pastoral message.
Filipino Expert Urges American Catholics to Rethink Rhetoric on Vaccines
As American Catholics continue to wrangle over the morality of COVID-19 vaccines using stem cell lines remotely derived from aborted fetuses, one Filipino Dominican priest, who’s both a moral theologian and an MIT-trained molecular biologist, is pleading with them to consider the potentially dangerous global consequences of their rhetoric.
Bishops Say Pandemic Relief Bill Must be Passed Without Abortion Funding
If it becomes law, the American Rescue Plan Act would pit the great need Americans have for economic relief in this pandemic against those who insist the bill must include abortion funding, said the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the chairmen of seven USCCB committees.