The advertising campaign for Dan Brown’s latest book has already started: Inferno is climbing the charts of best-sellers, bringing in more money to its author and publisher. Dan Brown is, in fact, first of all, a cash cow. But he is also a mudslinger making attacks on the Catholic Faith and Church; his latest novel, too, [...]
Before the Trip, A Half-Hour of Private Prayer to the Virgin Mary... The car carrying Pope Francis is mobbed by people when it gets stuck in traffic as Francis is driven from the airport to the Metropolitan Cathedral in Rio de Janeiro on July 22 (CNS photo). Speaking to reporters aboard the papal flight [...]
The encyclical was actually almost finished, Pope Francis told some Italian bishops in private this spring. Then, on June 13, talking with members of the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, he said: “Now an encyclical will be published, which they say has been written by ‘four hands.’ Pope Benedict handed it over to me. It [...]
“A miracle which will amaze the world!” In these few and mysterious words, the second miracle in Blessed John Paul II’s canonization process was being described earlier this year by people close to the cause. Then came rumors among Vatican correspondents that the chosen case involved a miracle in Costa Rica: a woman healed from severe brain [...]
Having been given a Smartbox (www.smartbox.com) gift card with a fast-expiring time limit, I decided to dine at one of the restaurants valid for use of this voucher. I hit upon DivinPeccato (“divine sin”), a rather inappropriate play on words. The restaurant is located near Trastevere, in Piazza della Rovere, a few steps from St. Peter’s [...]
All three archangels (Michael, Gabriel and Raphael) are now venerated in a common feast on September 29, which used to be St. Michael’s feast alone. “MI-CA-EL” means “Who is like to God?” Such was the cry of the great archangel when he smote the rebel Lucifer in the conflict of the heavenly hosts, and from that [...]
MAY Thursday 16 A CALL FOR GLOBAL, ETHICAL FINANCE REFORM Pope Francis today called for global financial reform that respects human dignity, helps the poor, promotes the common good and allows states to regulate markets. “Money has to serve, not to rule,” he said in his strongest remarks yet as Pope concerning the world’s economic and [...]
In Luke 19 we find an essential, highly suggestive description of one of Jesus’ direct encounters with those intrigued by His preaching. On entering the city of Jericho swarming with people, the Master sees Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector and a wealthy man on top of a sycamore-fig tree. Being short, Zacchaeus had climbed the tree [...]
Anne de Bretagne,Queen of France, commissioned thisprayer book for her son Charles-Orland in c. 1494 On display in a splendid exhibition called “Illuminating Faith: The Eucharist in Medieval Life and Art” until September 2 are 65 of the some 1,300 medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts belonging to New York’s Morgan Library. Here illuminating means [...]
Raphael’s portrait in the Uffizi Gallery (Florence) of Pope Leo X and Cardinals Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici, later Pope Clement VII, and Luigi de’ Rossi, with the Hamilton Bible. Overlapping until August 18 with “Springtime of the Renaissance,” the subject of my June/July’s “Of Books, Art, and People,” but continuing, most appropriately, at [...]