St. Peter Claver: Slave of the Slaves

There is a movement afoot that claims that the Roman Catholic Church was long insensitive to the plight of black slaves or to the institution of slavery in general. The movement is growing more vocal and more hostile and levies some extraordinarily uncharitable and unfounded claims. This is not the place to lay out those…

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Inspiration from St. Stephen of Hungary and His Crown

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with Pope Francis by phone on Friday and thanked him for his prayers. The phone call came the day after the funeral at St. Peter’s Basilica for Cardinal Jozef Tomko, who at age 98 had been the Catholic Church’s oldest living cardinal, and the last of the great Cold War…

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Remembering Leo XIII’s Arcanum—On Christian Marriage

Few popes in the history of the Church had the impact of Pope Leo XIII. Born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci on March 2, 1810, he was the sixth of seven sons born to Count Lodovico Pecci and Anna Prosperi-Buzi. At age eight, Lodovico and Anna sent their son to study at a Catholic school…

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St. Rita of Cascia: One of the Incorruptibles

She has become one of my favorite saints, and yet I usually don’t think of her until her feast day, which every year is May 22. In fact, you would be reading this article earlier, ahead of her feast day, if I had thought ahead. Her feast day also happens to be the day when…

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Divine Mercy Sunday and St. Faustina’s Message

This Sunday, April 24, 2022, is Divine Mercy Sunday, given to us by Saint Faustina Kowalska, by the pope who canonized her, and by their Lord Jesus. In a personal moment of divine inspiration or plain dumb luck (more likely in my case), I grabbed her famous Diary to check if she had any revelations…

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Inspiration from the Ukrainian Martyrs

The current battle playing out in the public eye between a Russian authoritarian leader and the people of the Ukraine is unfortunately nothing new. This is a rivalry that goes way back. And the worst times was the period when Ukraine was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union and its atheistic and (indeed) genuinely evil…

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Catholic Elements of Home Alone

Released in November 1990, in time for the Thanksgiving and holiday theater-rush, the film Home Alone became an instant Christmas classic. It was a box-office smash, grossing nearly a half-billion dollars in receipts worldwide. It received numerous accolades, with Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. Its main star, Macaulay Culkin, became a household name. The…

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John Paul II’s Feast Day and Historic Landmarks

October 22 is the feast day of Saint Pope John Paul II (on the General Roman Calendar). And for this year, 2021, his feast day comes at a historically notable time. This year marks some remarkable anniversaries related to what in retrospect was one of the sainted pope’s most notable historical accomplishments: the defeat of…

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Unchained

I love the old Twilight Zone episodes. One of my favorites is called “The Howling Man.” A bedraggled, desperate, ill tourist somewhere in the remote mountains of Europe happens upon a monastery late at night in the middle of nowhere. The monks and the abbot, Brother Jerome, are reluctant to let him in, but their…

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