Fr Joshua J. Whitfield Zep 3:14-18a Is 12:2-3, 4, 5-6 Phil 4:4-7 Lk 3:10-18 The point is summed up in what Josef Pieper wrote once, that “we are not the forgers of our own felicity.” Of course, he wasn’t at all the only one to say something like this, such has always been true.…
KNA “Pilgrimage is now absolutely safe and also important for society,” the head of Catholics in the Holy Land said recently on a trip to Germany. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, is counting on a rapid normalisation of pilgrimage tourism following the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. He hopes that the relative…
Fr Adrian Crowley St Josephine Bakhita was born in 1869, in Sudan. Her village was surrounded by palms, banana trees, fields, shrubs. Her tribe lived peacefully, working the fields. Her father was an important man in the village. As a child she was full of life and joyful, loved her brothers and helped her…
Dear Editor, As I sit here tonight my wife is in the next room being treated by the palliative care team. She was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour and her life expectancy was estimated to be 3 or 4 months. I struggled for a few weeks trying to help her as she needed to…
Walter Sánchez Silva (CNA) The Nicaraguan dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and his “co-president” and wife, Rosario Murillo, this week kidnapped and expelled from the country Fr Floriano Ceferino Vargas, a priest of the Diocese of Bluefields. Medardo Mairena, a former peasant leader now in exile, stated on X that “Fr Floriano Ceferino Vargas, parish priest of the…
KNA Archbishop Scicluna of Malta has warned against using the methods of the World Synod’s spiritual dialogue – an alternation of speaking and meditation without direct discussion – everywhere in the Church: “If, for example, I have to deal with financial experts for the audit of the Archdiocese of Malta, I don’t need to have…
KNA The signals are positive: the Pope’s ambassador to Syria reports that the rebels are respecting religious diversity in the country. The Pope’s ambassador to Syria is relieved about the largely peaceful change of power in the country so far. In an interview with Vatican News, Cardinal Mario Zenari made an urgent appeal to the…
Fr Alan Hilliard The book of Job is an amazingly insightful work which tries to understand the human condition and the possibility of God. He presents insights into friendship, family, property, money and death. In Scripture, we see him being stripped of all he owns and all he knows and is left with nothing.…
Dear Editor, While politicians campaign on issues such as climate change, Trump-economics, migrant pressures, etc., they ignore the writing on the wall; our birth-rate is in free-fall. In many parts of Europe, their birth rate has plunged to less than half that needed for replacement. Our collective unwillingness to make a healthy family life possible leaves…
It was proper for God to crush my dreamy life and move me to Ireland because I was building my own castle instead of joining His, says Angela Suryadana As most girls growing up in the early 90s, my media consumption was dominated by stories of good-looking damsels in distress who were rescued by…