Pope Francis has appointed Italian Vatican journalist Andrea Tornielli, 54, editorial director of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communications. Announced in a Holy See Press Office bulletin, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018, Tornielli will hold this position which coordinates Vatican media. In the same bulletin, it was announced that the Pope nominated Andrea Monda as Director of L’Osservatore Romano...

This year, as we’ve journeyed through Advent, I’ve tried a little experiment. I’ve kept track of how often I’ve heard about “the holidays,” “holiday sales” and “holiday gift-giving” . . . and how little I’ve heard about the heart and meaning of the season: Christmas. Try it yourself. Listen to the radio...

Mary Owen wasn’t welcomed into the world until more than a decade after Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life made its premiere in 1946. But she grew up cherishing the film and getting the inside scoop on its making from its star, Donna Reed—who just so happens to be her mom. Though Reed passed away in 1986, Owen has stood as one of the film’s most dedicated historians...

It is a generous letter, fully in keeping with the generosity of the people he is addressing. Still, like many people who write to express their thanks for unexpected or unwanted Christmas gifts, it seems that Dickens could not resist poking gentle fun at the purchasers’ taste, not least by hinting that sending him a turkey the size of a small child was perhaps being generous to a fault...

Four years ago, nurse practitioners Dede Chism and her daughter Abbey Sinnett opened Bella Natural Women’s Care as a state of the art health clinic offering care that is natural, scientific and holistic. When they opened their doors that Dec. 8 they had no patients—but they did have hearts full of faith and hope.

Journalists tend to overuse phrases such as “make or break”, and in the case of Pope Francis’s annual Christmas address to the Roman Curia on Friday, it really doesn’t apply. The Latin American pope has given five such speeches so far to the senior leadership of the Vatican bureaucracy, and by the time he’s done, there will no doubt be several more...

Too often, the modus operandi in the Church continues to be ignoring problems priests have. So often we look at them and assume as long as they aren’t minors or major PR disasters, we can ignore them. This silence is a disaster! When we ignore serious misconduct in other spheres, we keep these priests from getting help and we open up to ignoring bigger problems...

Following the conviction of Cardinal George Pell in the Australian state of Victoria last week, new details have emerged about the nature of the crimes for which he has been found guilty. Pell was found guilty Dec. 11 on five charges of sexual abuse of minors, following accusations that he sexually assaulted two former members of the Melbourne cathedral choir...

I often hear that since most of what is produced in any age is garbage, the quality of the hymns in a compilation such as the Hymnal 1940 is partly an illusion, because the bad stuff will have been tossed aside. This observation is by way of excusing the bulk of church songs composed since 1965. Time has not yet done its winnowing...

To say that something is “necessary” is to declare that it is so essential that to be without it causes grave if not deadly harm. The word comes from Latin. The root sense is that what is necessary is something from which we cannot stray, something from which there is no withdrawal, something we cannot evade. There is an expression in Latin...

This 1930 article from the Register carried a warning from Father William Bolger to a gathering of the National Council of Catholic Women in Minnesota. “Father Bolger's address was one of outstanding frankness, and the priest left his audience gasping” at his predictions. Four decades before Humanae Vitae, he hinted at the sexual revolution that would follow society’s embrace of contraception...

When Charles Barkley's mother, Charcey Glenn, passed away in June 2015, Barkley's hometown of Leeds, Alabama, came to the funeral to pay respects. But there was also an unexpected guest. Barkley’s friends couldn’t quite place him. He wasn’t a basketball player, he wasn’t a sports figure, and he wasn’t from Barkley’s hometown...

Those who understand compound interest can make it work for them and those that don’t understand it spend much of life trying to get out from its shackles. When we think of compounding we typically think of finance and positive returns, as in “good compounding.” But compounding just reinforces what’s already happening — good or bad...

Ahead of his 82nd birthday, Pope Francis held a party and ate birthday cake with children under the care of a free health clinic inside the Vatican. The celebration took place inside the Paul VI hall before the Sunday Angelus. It included a surprise birthday cake for Pope Francis, whose Dec. 17 birthday falls on Monday. Joined by the children’s families...

The weather in Washington, D.C. was dismal on Saturday: more than two inches of rain. 2018 has now surpassed 1889 to become the wettest year since records have been kept. So far, more than 62 inches of rain have fallen this year; the annual average is only about 40 inches. On this cold, rainy December morning, a group of us stood in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic in northeast D...

Father Jim Sichko has a 50-state congregation and a simple mandate from the pope: Go forth and do good deeds. That’s why the Roman Catholic priest found himself standing by the drive-thru of a popular Hollywood fast-food joint on a recent windy, rain-swept afternoon buying lunch for everyone who stopped by. The next day he’d be at a gas station in Kentucky...

At a time when labor unions are weak, Catholics still have a place in the labor movement, said a priest who emphasized the Church’s historic efforts to teach the rights of labor and train workers to organize. “On the local and state level, Catholics are a major part of the labor movement. They took to heart our Catholic social teaching...

God’s loving care for his children – listening to their cares, answering their prayers and petitions – is a cause for rejoicing, Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Sunday. “The awareness that in difficulties we can always turn to the Lord, and that he never rejects our invocations, is a great reason for joy,” the pope said Dec...

In modern times, we tend to link our notions of happiness and inner well-being to external circumstances and happenstance. We think that happiness will be found when the things of this world are arranged in the way we like. If we can just accumulate enough money and creature comforts, we think we’ll be happy and have a better sense of mental well-being...

Let’s make one thing clear at the outset: It takes a special kind of chutzpah for the Patriarch of Moscow to complain that his bishops and clergy are being subjected to pressure, intimidation and even “persecution” from the state in today’s Ukraine. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow recently made precisely that appeal in letters to Pope Francis...