The Moynihan Letters

    Letter #127, Monday, September 25: John Lamont: The Significance of Pope Francis for the Church     We just came across the transcript of a lecture given by Dr. John R.T. Lamont in Greenwich, Connecticut on March 16, 2023, and posted online at StHughofCluny.org on March 23, on “The Significance of Pope Francis for the Church.”     Dr. Lamont [...]

The Last Judgment by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel in Rome     Letter #126, 2023, Monday, September 25: Divine Providence     I write from Beirut, Lebanon. Here, with pilgrims traveling with me, I yesterday visited the tomb of St. Charbel, canonized in 1977 by Pope Paul VI.     Charbel lived from 1828 to 1898, and, since his death, his [...]

The Exaltation of the True Cross by an anonymous Russian Orthodox icon painter (link)     Letter #125, 2023, Thursday, September 14: Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross     I just received this letter from a reader, Joe Cahill. (Thank you, Joe.) I found it fascinating and wished to share it with you, since today is the [...]

    Notre Dame de La Salette, France (this is my own photo of a framed photograph on the wall of the sanctuary)     In La Salette, France, in 1846 — when none of these buildings were here — the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to two French children: Mélanie Calvat, then 15, and Maximin Giraud, [...]

    Garabandal, Spain. In this tiny Spanish village not far from the northern coast of Spain in the 1960s, the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared on numerous occasions to four Spanish girls: Conchita González, her second cousin Jacinta González, and Mari Loli Mazón, all three then 12 years old (in 1961), and Mari Cruz [...]

Pope Francis prays before Our Lady on Wednesday afternoon, August 30, 2023 | Vatican Media     Letter #122, 2023, Wednesday, August 30: Pope-Jesuits Portugal     “Looking back” is useless, Pope warns Catholics in America...      “The view of Church doctrine as monolithic is erroneous,” Francis said during an August 5 Jesuit Q&A in Portugal     In what may [...]

    Pope’s praise of Russian culture gets him into trouble     Ukrainian church head and others took Francis’ extolling of the “great Russia of Peter the Great, Catherine II” amiss     Last Friday, August 25, Pope Francis addressed Russian young people participating in the 10th National Meeting of Catholic Youth at Russia’s oldest Catholic Church, St. Catherine’s Basilica, [...]

Cardinal Raymond Burke (file photo)     Letter #120, 2023, Monday, August 28: Cardinal Burke on the Synod     Synod as “Pandora’s Box”: New book raises and answers 100 questions on the Synod on Synodality     A new book has come out warning about the coming Vatican Synod on Synodality. The format of The Synodal Process is [...]

   Pope John Paul II (1920-2005), Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022) and Pope Francis (1936-present): the guardians, interpreters, defenders and promoters of the Catholic faith in our time... Are there limits to the magisterial teaching of the "social Gospel"? The beginning of an assessment...     “I believe that Saint Francis is the example par excellence of care for [...]

    Russian opera singer Svetlana Kasyan, her daughter Natalia, her husband, a Russian from Rostov-on-Don, Leonid Sevastianov, and Pope Francis, in the Domus Santa Marta, in November 2013     Letter #118, 2023, Friday, August 4: Breaking     We will be having a live conversation with Leonid Sevastianov in Moscow at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time today. Sevastianov will discuss the [...]