Heading north from Rome, leaving the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea, on an outcrop of volcanic tufa is the medieval village of Ceri. A ring of crenelated walls surrounds the ancient dwellings, the Church of Mary Immaculate, a place of pilgrimage, and the Torlonia Palace, all facing the village square. Ceri is an ideal starting point [...]
“There are four planes or fields in which God is reflected. Two within, reason and revelation, or the light of nature in the intelligence, and the illumination of the Holy Spirit elevating the intelligence by a supernatural light. Two also without, creation and the Church, or in other words, the world of nature, which is [...]
Before this year’s March conclave, but also before the 2005 conclave, some Argentinians circulated a dossier accusing the archbishop of Buenos Aires of collaboration with the military regime in the 1970s. The media amplified these rumors even after the election of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as Bishop of Rome. The rumors originated for the most part from [...]
“I arrived in Italy on the same day as Bob — on May 17, 1984. He arrived in Rome by plane from the United States; I entered northern Italy by bus from Poland. I wanted to be at Monte Cassino on May 18, but the pilgrimage was organized in such a way that we were there [...]
Germany is home to 38 sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Since 1985, two of them, the Ottonian Romanesque St. Michael’s Church, built between 1010 and 1020 by Bishop Bernward, and St. Mary’s Cathedral and its extraordinary medieval treasury of more than 2,000 artifacts (many of which were also accumulated by Bishop Bernward), have been [...]
Pope Francis Archbishop Pietro Parolin was absent from the ceremony of his installation as the new Vatican secretary of state on October 15. Struck by gallstones (or appendicitis, according to other sources), Parolin had to undergo an urgent, though not grave, operation. During the ceremony, Pope Francis thanked the outgoing secretary of state, Cardinal [...]
Pope Pius XII St. Pius X (Pope from 1903 to 1914) was the last Pope to be canonized. Now, after almost six decades, causes for the last five Popes, with the exception of Benedict XVI, have been initiated. Don’t you think that’s too many? And why almost all at the same time? Don Nicola [...]
“I do not understand my own actions... For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want, that I do... For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me [...]
MEETING On September 11 Pope Francis met, in a private audience, Dominican Father GUSTAVO GUTIÉRREZ, one of the founders of liberation theology and author of a book entitled Liberation Theology (1971), regarded as the manifesto of that current of thought within the Catholic Church. Father Gustavo Gutierrez is pictured in 2007 on the campus of [...]