In a much anticipated moment, for the first time in more than five years, the eight bells of the north tower of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris rang out again on Nov. 8. “It is a beautiful, important and symbolic step,” said Philippe Jost, head of the team overviewing the cathedral’s restoration, cited in French Catholic newspaper “La Croix.”
With the Holy Year 2025 beginning on Christmas Eve, the Vatican’s 2024 Christmas stamps feature the Jubilee message of hope and a prayer for peace.
Pope Francis, the king of Spain, bishops, and politicians decried the devastation and loss of life in southeast Spain amid horrendous floods that left thousands of people homeless and city streets unrecognizable.
This holiday’s roots stretch back to the 4th century when Christians sought to solemnly venerate Roman martyrs some 300 years after the resurrection of Christ. In that period, persecution against Christians
came in “waves,” said Father Michael Bruno, dean of seminarians and professor of church history at St. Joseph Seminary and College at Dunwoodie, Yonkers.
A Holy Year, or jubilee, is a “great religious event” in the Catholic tradition, according to the Vatican. The Holy See describes it as one of “forgiveness of sins and also punishment due to sin … reconciliation between adversaries, of conversion and receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and consequently of solidarity, hope, justice, commitment to serve God with joy and in peace with our brothers and sisters.”
A report on the persecution of Christians globally has found increases in violations in nearly two thirds of countries examined.
Two days after opening the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica to inaugurate the Holy Year 2025, Pope Francis will travel to a Rome prison to open a Holy Door as a “tangible sign of the message of hope” for people in prisons around the world, the Vatican announced.
Three years after he asked the world’s Catholics to walk together in faith on a synodal journey, Pope Francis said that the church cannot risk becoming “static” but must continue as a “missionary church that walks with her Lord through the streets of the world.”
Pete Stamm recently flew 5,000 miles to another continent, not for adventure or leisure, but for a simple drink of water. Just before the start of the school year, Stamm, a social studies teacher at Sacred Heart Catholic Academy in Glendale, flew to the African country of Ghana and made his way to the village of Konor-Kofe (population: 2,000) to witness a ceremony in which the village elders dedicated a new water well.
The metropolitan archbishop of Haiti is speaking out following an Oct. 3 massacre by armed gang members in that nation’s central western region, an attack that killed at least 115 and displaced some 6,000.
