During the eight hours Pope Francis spent in Mauritius, a multiethnic island nation in the Indian Ocean about 1,200 miles off the coast of Africa, he urged the inhabitants to remember their immigrant roots and to integrate those who are arriving as they were welcomed by their ancestors.
Archbishop Patrick C. Pinder of Nassau, Bahamas, celebrated Mass Sept. 8 for evacuee families and Catholic school staff members a week after Hurricane Dorian slammed into the islands.
For decades, the Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton has enjoyed greater popularity in the United States than in his homeland of Great Britain – and now an American university’s UK campus will showcase the writer’s own collection.
Sister Helen Prejean has some advice for Pope Francis, who, six years into his papacy, still encounters resistance to his efforts to shake up the Catholic Church: “Be patient – it takes time!”
A young Madagascar girl sat nervously on the side of a humble stage, sporting a white dress, light pink sweater and green sandals – a colorful, seemingly new ensemble perhaps bought with considerable sacrifice by her parents for the occasion.
Sept. 2 was to have been the first day of school at St. Francis de Sales with an estimated 340 children enrolled, but now the school is in ruins and families had been evacuated after Dorian
Madagascan President Andry Rajoelina, a Catholic, and his wife, Mialy, sat near the front of the crowd as Pope Francis preached about the Gospel call to solidarity and the joy that comes from putting faith before power or possessions.
The great majority of those who packed the small sports stadium Sunday were children who live in the 5,000 homes built by Opeka and his foundation. Some 15,000 children a year receive a free education that runs from kindergarten to university. The kids waited for hours for Francis to arrive, singing songs and cheering whenever Opeka spoke to them in Malagasi, the local language.
“Maybe the day you entered the convent, the devil remained sad at the door,” the pope said to the cloistered nuns disregarding his prepared text.
On Friday, Pope Francis was due to touch down in Madagascar, the second leg of his three-nation African trip.
