Upon hearing of the death of John the Baptist, Jesus retired to a deserted place presumably to grieve for his cousin. But He didn’t allow his grief to distract Him from his duties. It fueled his compassion: He readily responded to the crowds who sought Him for healing, followed by the great miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. The same can be true for us in times of grief...

Several leading U.S. Catholic cardinals and bishops urged congressional leaders to provide emergency private school tuition aid to low-middle income families, in a letter on Thursday. The president of the U.S. bishops’ conference (USCCB), Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, signed the letter to House and Senate leaders, along with USCCB education chair Bishop Michael Barber of Oakland.

Every now and then, readers — or people I meet in daily life — ask this question: Why do journalists write so much about the Religious Right (capital letters), while devoting way less digital ink to the actions, policies and beliefs of the religious left (no capital letters). That is a complex question and you can hear me struggling with it all the way through this week’s “Crossroads” podcast...

After an official with the Society of St. Pius X told priests and staff they should speak with criminal investigators only in the presence of an attorney provided by the group, the group’s leaders say their message was not intended to suggest anyone should cover up alleged sex abuse. The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is a breakaway traditionalist group of priests and bishops with no official canonical status in the Church.

Over my years in Rome, I’ve often mused on something St. John Paul II liked to tell people who live and study here: Imparare Roma, meaning “learn Rome”, with the idea being that just walking around the city offers a unique education in Catholicism, both its glories and its grubbiness. John Paul knew what he was talking about, having studied here in the late 1940s at the Dominican-run Angelicum University...

To my mind our position today is approaching something rather medieval. Hear me out. The constant talk of the novel Coronavirus (and the synonyms we now use to describe our times: pandemic, epidemic, pestilence, etc.) has animated in my Catholic imagination references to the great plagues of the West. In fact, the Great Famine of 1315-1317 and the Black Death of 1347-1351 eviscerated Europe...

In the ethnic tradition of Anglo-Saxons, the “patter songs” of Gilbert and Sullivan have been the equivalent of contemporary rap music. Learning the repertoire was part of the expected rites of passage and, in the 1960s, I did my duty, even attaining to the heights of playing Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, a baronet disguised as young farmer Robin Oakapple in a New York City production of Ruddigore. In the second act, portraits of Robin’s ancestor come alive and step out of their frames to curse him as he writhes in unspeakable agony. While I quickly fell from that peak in my theatrical career, I still have clippings of critical reviews that thought my plangent voice and shrieks of pain were convincing.

Cardinal Leopoldo Jose Brenes Solorzano of Managua said Mass Wednesday at the entrance of the Blood of Christ chapel in his cathedral, which was firebombed last week. "The Church has always suffered and will continue to suffer, but our assurance is that the Lord is with us,” Cardinal Brenes said during the Aug. 5 Mass.

The pandemic supposedly got people back into their kitchens — baking bread and making comfort food casseroles. But around here, we’ve actually found ourselves getting take-out a little more often. At first it was a way to support local restaurants, and then it became increasingly uncomfortable to linger in grocery stores hunting for rarely-used ingredients for new recipes...

While many Catholics are aware that May is the month dedicated to Our Lady and October has a dedication to the Holy Rosary, fewer will realize that August is specifically dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary—a central devotional theme of the Fatima message. Even before the Blessed Virgin appeared to the young seers, Jacinta, Francisco and Lucia...

The Vatican’s doctrinal office issued Thursday a clarification on the sacrament of baptism, stating changes to the formula to emphasize community participation are not permitted. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded to a question about whether it would be valid to administer the sacrament of baptism saying “We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Marisol Escobar’s statue of St. Damien of Molokai has graced the statuary hall in the U.S. Capitol since 1969. The people of Hawaii chose this statue to mark their tenth anniversary of statehood. It stands out, in part, because of Escobar’s distinctive blocked style. “Marisol” (as she was called) sculpted her subjects almost as square frames, flattening them like screens upon which she could project her own presence. One critic called this “feminine playfulness” set against square “patriarchy.” Marisol said she simply preferred to see herself in her subjects this way.

Pope Francis on Thursday named 13 new members to the Council for the Economy, which oversees Vatican finances and the work of the Secretariat for the Economy. Among the six women and one man appointed as new members of the Vatican’s top financial oversight body, are high-level experts in banking, finance, asset management, and international law from Spain, Italy, and Germany, as well as a former member of the British cabinet.

Michiganders likely weren’t too happy when the Wisconsin Badgers beat several of its football teams last year; its Upper Peninsula, however, took it in stride — at least it’s unofficial Twitter account did. "It’s official, I belong to Wisconsin now," the Tweet read, after rattling off the scores. The account even changed its name to the "Upper Peninsula of Wisconsin."

One cannot but notice a growing sense of concern and even anxiety about the future. Are we in for serious disruptions of the social order, and should we be doing something to prepare? The fact is that the last several months have taught a lesson: things we thought could not happen can happen, surprisingly quickly. This lesson should not be without fruit in our lives. But what is the appropriate response?

You could say she's milking the opportunity. On Monday, American swimming gold medalist Katie Ledecky shared a video showing her swim the length of a pool with a full glass of chocolate milk on her head, never spilling a drop.

A terrifying chemical explosion in Beirut’s harbor felt as far away as Cyprus has shattered the city and ripped a hole in the heart of Lebanon. Scores of men and women are now dead and thousands more injured. The government’s preliminary report has ruled out terrorism or an act of war, but blamed a warehouse fire that reached highly explosive chemicals left unsecured for six years in the port and detonated them with such force it left a brief mushroom cloud to hang over the city.

Yes, you read that right. Most of you have probably heard about genetic testing on Down Syndrome Children that results in a very high percentage of them being aborted. The US doesn’t keep great statistics on this but the best research estimated 67% termination rate. In European countries, the termination rate is often over 90%...

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) and Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) co-habited this earth for a space of 36 years, from 1925, when O’Connor was born, to 1961, when Hemingway died, but their lives could not have been more different. While Hemingway partied at bullfights in Pamplona, hunted lions in Africa, and battled mighty marlin off the coast of Cuba, O’Connor lived quietly on her mother’s dairy farm in rural Georgia, writing fiction for two hours a day and tending to her brood of forty peacocks.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was at the National Statuary Hall Collection in DC on Thursday, and she shared a photo of the statue representing Hawaii on her Instagram account, commenting that “when we select figures to tell the stories of colonized places, it is the colonizers and settlers whose stories are told – and virtually no one else.”