The Moynihan Letters

    In an effort to favor the creation of a community of readers of these letters, I will be publishing, from time to time, the letters readers send to me. (Possibly on each Thursday of the week.)     I publish them, and will include them on our web site, in part in order to add to the [...]

    Immacolata Solaro Del Borgo, now age 93, in a photo from six years ago. She is an Italian noblewoman who has in her family archives precious relics of saints, including of St. John Chrysostom and St. John the Evangelist. She has spent her life trying to build trust between the East and the West, by [...]

Photo Credit     Immacolata Solaro Del Borgo, now age 93, in a photo from six years ago. She is an Italian noblewoman who has in her family archives precious relics of saints, including of St. John Chrysostom and St. John the Evangelist. She has spent her life trying to build trust between the East [...]

    Letter #112, 2023, Monday, July 17: Corporal Works of Mercy     To become a prisoner is to lose one's freedom.     In Catholic teaching, we hold that there are seven works of "corporal mercy" which all of us, in so far as it is possible for us, should practice.     One of those works is "to visit the [...]

    Pope Francis, 86, with fellow Argentine Archbishop Victor Fernández, 60, 26 years younger, together at the Vatican on June 30, two weeks ago, just before Francis announced on July 1 that he had chosen Fernandez to head the Church's top doctrinal office, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (the office Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger [...]

    The Twitter account of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 82, the former papal nuncio to the United States, has just been blocked.     See the report of this news here.     The apparent spark for this suspension decision is a powerful text (link)Viganò has just published warning of what he sees as the very grave danger to the [...]

    Below, you will find my editorial from the July/August 2023 issue of Inside the Vatican magazine.      I invite you to join me in less than one hour, 11:00 a.m. Eastern for a live podcast with Iben Thranholm, a Danish theologian who is today one of the leading Scandinavian Catholic voices.     We will be discussing [...]

    "Under my personal patronage, the civil association Exsurge Dominehas been founded, which has as its social purpose “to provide assistance, support and material help to clergy, religious and consecrated laity who are in conditions of particular economic and logistical difficulties; to defend the unchanged and incorruptible Tradition of the Catholic Faith; to preserve and promote [...]

    Bishop Athanasius Schneider, 62, in a photo from 2015, eight years ago, when he was 54.     Schneider yesterday, on the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul (June 29) released a brief but powerful statement on the old Catholic liturgy.     He said, essentially, that not complying with prohibitions of the celebration of the old Mass by [...]

    "In 1642, at the age of nineteen, he invented an arithmetic machine, the ancestor of our modern computers." —Pope Francis, in a letter about Blaise Pascal, released today in Rome, on the 400th anniversary of Pascal's birth on June 19, 1623     Above, Blaise Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand, France, June 19, 1623-Paris, France, August 19, 1662).     Pascal died [...]