Parents usually feel joy and anticipation on the day their child is baptized into the Catholic faith. Philip and Jessica Chan were no different, except they experienced those emotions five times over. The Chans watched as their five daughters — Olivia, 7, Madeline, 5, twins Camile and Eloise, 4, and Genevieve, 2 — were baptized by Father Gregory McIlhenney at St. Andrew Avellino Church in Flushing on Jan. 26.
Trump’s vice president is JD Vance, the 40-year-old U.S. Senator from Ohio. Barring a bad showing in office, he will be the presumed candidate for the Republicans in 2028. If he does get the party’s nod and wins the election, he will be the third Catholic president in U.S. history.
During a trip to Europe in 1953, accomplished 20th-century jazz pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams was exhausted,
emotionally drained, and facing financial peril when a friend took her to a small church in France where she began to pray.
As Deanna Witkowski explains in her 2021 biography of Williams, titled “Music for the Soul,” that’s where the musician’s spiritual journey and conversion to Catholicism began.
The COVID-19 quarantines, lockdowns and stay-at-home orders are the perfect opportunity for conversion: for individuals, for the church and for governments, Pope Francis said in an interview.
