A reproduction of parts of Matera, the city in southern Italy called the “Italian Jerusalem.“ The scene also cost far less than last year’s nativity scene. We know what Jerusalem was like when Jesus lived 2,000 years ago thanks to the description provided by Josephus Flavius. As described by the Roman-Jewish historian, Jerusalem must have been [...]
Monday 12 “IT’S WONDERFUL BEING OLD” Presenting himself as “an elderly man visiting his peers,” Benedict XVI visited a Rome residence for the elderly run by the lay Community of Sant’Egidio, urging the residents to see their age as a sign of God’s blessing and urging society to value their presence and wisdom. The Pope visited [...]
ANNIVERSARY On November 7, at Pope Benedict’s general audience, some 7,000 Polish pilgrims were part of the crowd. The pilgrims came to thank the Lord for 20 years of RADIO MARIA’s activities in Poland. The pilgrims attended a Mass near St. Peter’s tomb celebrated by the Pope’s secretary of state, Cardinal TARCISIO BERTONE, and by Cardinal [...]
In a late 2012 public address strongly reminiscent of the interview with the Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Mario Martini published immediately after his death on August 31, 2012, Abbot Martin Werlen, OSB, of Einsiedeln Abbey in Switzerland deplored the lack of courage, vision, and creativity in the Church. Pleading for closer attention to the “signs of the [...]
Mary Eberstadt takes as her starting point a 1984 essay by the late Georgetown University professor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, castigating the widespread refusal of her contemporaries to believe that Communism was evil. Right up to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the professoriat and the mainstream [...]
Our true “man of the year” is not on our list of “Top Ten People” of 2012. He is Pope Benedict XVI himself. His eloquent words, his courage in speaking the truth during this difficult year, have been an inspiration. Each year, Inside the Vatican magazine selects ten people from around the world whom we feel [...]
The danger facing the West is the loss of Christian faith. When Christian faith is lost, the way is opened for the loss of individual dignity and the rise of tyranny. Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in [...]
Sotto il Sole di Roma A short walk from Saint Peter’s and from Castel Sant’Angelo, on the third floor of an elegant vintage palace, you’ll find the cozy, comfortable and spacious bed and breakfast Sotto il Sole di Roma (“Beneath the Roman Sun”), in a street in the upscale Prati area of Rome. All rooms are [...]
The history of Prague begins with its castle, founded by Prince Bořivoj in 870 AD and still the world’s largest. Less than a decade earlier, in 863 AD, two brothers, St. Cyril and St. Methodius, originally Greeks from Salonika, brought Christianity to Moravia. They baptized Bořivoj and his wife Ludmilla, but their baptisms were by no [...]
We received the following letter from Father Hughes at Christmas and felt it deserved a wider readership, so we decided to publish it here. Brothers Cassian Koenemann, front, Cuthbert Elliott and John McCusker, all monks from St. Louis Abbey, and seminarian Daniel Gill, attend class Feb. 11 at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis. [...]