by Doreen Abi Raad BEIRUT (CNS) — Refugees from Syria are in “complete darkness” about their future, said an official with Caritas Lebanon. Father Simon Faddoul, president of Caritas Lebanon, which has been working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon for 14 months, said there was a large influx of people during the last week of […]
by Patricia Zapor WASHINGTON (CNS) —Potential applicants for the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) may have been anxious to submit applications as soon as the system was scheduled to open Aug. 15, but as the date approached, many issues remained unsettled. At an Aug. 7 panel briefing, Alejandro Mayorkas, director of […]
Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, meet briefly with Pope Benedict XVI at the end of the pope’s weekly general audience Aug. 8 in Castel Gandolfo, Italy. Giffords was shot and seriously wounded during a political appearance in Arizona in January 2011.
by Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) —Catholic devotion to the saints appears to be alive and well, and Pope Benedict XVI continues to proclaim new saints at a regular pace. The official calendar of saints’ feast days will grow in October when the pope canonizes seven men and women, including Mother Marianne Cope of Molokai […]
HONOLULU (CNS) — U.S. District Court Judge Alan Kay in an Aug. 8 ruling said Hawaii’s laws banning same-sex marriage “are not unconstitutional,” and he threw out a lawsuit that had argued otherwise. The Hawaii Family Forum, a Christian educational organization, had intervened in the case to defend Hawaii’s marriage statutes, and its attorney, Jim […]
by Cindy Wooden VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Catholic Church teaches that beauty can be a path to God, and in an attempt to make that path easier for visitors to follow, the Vatican Museums have assigned two priests to guide the searching. Or just to talk. “Art and faith: A priest for you,” […]
by Barbara J. Fraser LIMA, Peru (CNS) – Half-hidden behind palm trees at the end of a once elegant avenue in a now rundown neighborhood, the Convento de los Descalzos – the Convent of the Barefoot Friars – has witnessed half a millennium of Peruvian history. Age, economic woes and benign neglect have taken their […]
by James Breig Telephones began ringing and e-mails started flying after an article appeared in the July 26 issue of The Tablet, recounting the World War II experiences of John A. La Barbera of Corona. The story, based on 45 letters he wrote from the South Pacific to a friend back home, told of La […]
by Nancy Frazier O’Brien WASHINGTON (CNS) – As the head of a small evangelical college serving 2,400 undergraduates and 600 graduate students, the Rev. Philip Graham Ryken has no quarrel with contraception on religious grounds but doesn’t want any part of a health insurance plan that offers certain drugs that can cause abortions. So the […]
Pope Benedict XVI has finished the third volume of his opus, “Jesus of Nazareth,” and perhaps also will publish an encyclical letter during the upcoming Year of Faith, said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state. “It is a great gift for the Year of Faith,” the cardinal told reporters in Les Combes di Introd, […]
