Pope Francis has just completed his Apostolic Journey to Egypt. By all standards, it was widlly successful. The very fact that it even occurred immediately makes it a success.
Editorials
Contemporary Martyrs
Pope Francis recently attended an ecumenical prayer service at the Church of St. Bartholomeo in Rome in which the Church honored the contemporary Christian martyrs of this 21st century.
Our Brothers
This question of the role of religious brothers is a key one in the Church. The Lord is still powerfully calling young men and women to serve the Church as priests, brothers, sisters, nuns and monks.
Strength in Consistency
Pope Francis’ post-synodal exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia,” was released one year ago this past week. The Church has been discussing it and debating it ever since.
Feast of Priesthood
We enter this week once again into the most sacred time of the Church’s year. This is, for us as Catholics, our “High Holy Days.” Beginning on Sunday, we commemorate Palm Sunday as we prepare to enter more deeply into the Lord’s Passion. We come to that week in which we reflect as a Church on those days that changed the world, those days by which our Lord opens his arms wide on the Cross with an embrace of love, and, by his wounds, heals all humanity.
Health Deserves Better
Sanctity of life is the single most important issue that we face in our nation today. No life is more vulnerable than the child in the womb. And that life must be protected.
Confession Available
Pope Francis held his yearly penitential service at St. Peter’s Basilica on March 17. In it, he urged confessors to go to the peripheries of evil and sin, despite it being, at times, “ugly;” nonetheless, the priest is called to go “and his work represents an authentic pastoral priority.”
Papal Continuity
Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, D.C., in a recent interview in America Magazine concerning Pope Francis, comments:
Trump’s Choice
Last week, President Donald J. Trump visited St. Andrew’s Catholic School in the Diocese of Orlando, Fla. Accompanying him were Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Governor Rick Scott. During his visit, the president told Bishop John Noonan, Orlando’s Ordinary, “You understand how much your students benefit from full education, one that enriches both the mind and the soul. That’s a good combination.”
Lent Has Begun
One of the great Roman traditions is the Station Church Masses each day during Lent. Coming out of the traditional Mass calendar, those of the North American College, the priests of the Casa Santa Maria and the seminarians on the Gianicolo go each day to a different Roman church as a pilgrimage early in the morning for Mass at 7 a.m. Each day, many other English speakers in the city who make this a major part of their Lenten experience join at the Station churches.