Bishop Robert Brennan ushered in the Jubilee Year by celebrating two Masses on Sunday, Dec. 29 — first at the Cathedral Basilica of St. James and then at the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph — and leading the faithful in a procession between the two churches as he held the monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament aloft during the mile and a half journey.
President Joe Biden has commuted the death sentences of 37 individuals on federal death row, a move that almost fulfills a longstanding request of the American bishops.
President-elect Donald Trump on Dec. 20 announced his intention to appoint Brian Burch, currently the president of CatholicVote, as the next U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See.
As many as 3,000 Catholic school children from poor families in the Philippines made their pop music debut in a new Christmas song by some members of the multi-platinum hip-hop/pop group Black Eyed Peas.
The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, the nation’s patronal church, has been named a special place of pilgrimage for the Catholic Church’s Jubilee Year 2025, the theme for which is “Pilgrims of Hope.”
The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe was marked by a personal gift from Pope Francis, a Christmas tree lighting, a newly renovated gift shop, and much more at the only parish in the Diocese of Brooklyn with her namesake.
The official portraits of seven Romanian bishops, taken sometime before the late 1940s, are a startling contrast to their prison mugshots.
During his years as professor of fundamental theology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, Salvatore “Rino” Fisichella was often cited by American seminarians as their favorite professor — an exponent of dynamic orthodoxy whose engaging classroom style was a blessed relief from the stolid ways of the Roman academy. Later, after Pope John Paul II issued Fides et Ratio [Faith and Reason], the 1998 encyclical that set Voltaire spinning in his grave, the joke in Rome was that, given the text’s likely drafters, the “F” and “R” in Fides and Ratio stood for “Fisichella” and “Ratzinger.”
The incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump plans to rescind a long-standing policy preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from making arrests at what are seen as sensitive locations, including houses of worship, schools and hospitals, according to a report by NBC News.
The apostolic nuncio to Syria says he hopes the war-torn nation will “move toward reconciliation” and at least “some prosperity” under democratic rule, following former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s ouster in a lightning offensive by rebel groups.
