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 trove of artifacts of local Jewish life — bar mitzvah invitations, high school yearbooks, marriage certificates, receipts from kosher caterers among them — is growing here in an unlikely place: a library in a Catholic university.
While English colonists who arrived in the New World were looking for greater opportunities, many of the Catholic colonists who arrived in Maryland also were looking to escape religious persecution.
Pope Francis hopes to embark on the first-ever papal visit to the biblical land of Iraq in early March in a spiritual pilgrimage of sorts to the place known in Arabic as the “land of the two rivers” — the mighty Tigris and Euphrates — and once renowned as Mesopotamia, the “cradle of civilization.”
Though American Catholics are used to receiving their ashes from thumb to forehead on Ash Wednesday, this year, ashes will be sprinkled on their heads. The gesture and practice of sprinkling ashes, however, has a longstanding history within Jewish and Catholic traditions.
President Donald Trump has issued an executive order calling for building a new garden, the National Garden of American Heroes, that will honor a diverse group of individuals whose contributions have enriched American life and history.
