If you subscribe to the caricature of devout religious believers as mostly sanctimonious hypocrites, the kind who rake in cash and care about human life only when it is unborn, come visit the doctor here. Dr. Tom Catena, 51, a Catholic missionary from Amsterdam, New York, is the only doctor at the 435-bed Mother of Read more
Awful fact: by 2030, half a billion people will be practicing open defecation. That’s an improvement. The current numbers are staggering: 2.5 billion people lack adequate sanitary facilities; 849 million practice open defecation. In Southeast Asia, that means 38 percent of the population; in sub-Saharan Africa, 25 percent meet their needs without safety and privacy. Read more
Just because we don’t talk about it, doesn’t mean that abortion isn’t something that affects Christian women. One in three women will have an abortion by the time they are 45 according to national statistics. That means that there are inevitably women in church who will have had an abortion – and it isn’t just Read more
Some 14.4 million people around the world were forced from their homes in 2014, the highest number of newly displaced people in 20 years. The main countries refugees were fleeing from and to shifted greatly last year, according to a new report by the United Nations. The crisis in Syria hugely affected the refugee population’s flow Read more
Let us suppose that along the coast of Normandy up to one million non-EU migrants are waiting to be packed like sardines in small unseaworthy vessels and to cross the English Channel. Let us suppose that first the Royal Navy, then the navies of a dozen other EU countries, start to search for all such Read more
In his brief pontificate, Pope Francis has coined some colourful terms to get his points across, for example, using “bat Christians” to describe those who hide their faith. While the new phrases he uses in his ecology encyclical are not as punchy, they succinctly help illustrate his points that care for the environment is a Read more
On the run? Don’t have time to read Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ 200-page encyclical on the care for the Earth? Here are some of the key quotes from the document: Introduction We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we Read more
As the American family changes, fatherhood is changing in important and sometimes surprising ways. Today, fathers who live with their children are taking a more active role in caring for them and helping out around the house. And the ranks of stay-at-home fathers and single fathers have grown significantly in recent decades. At the same time, more and more children are Read more
The day of prayer for refugees and migrants is 21 June 2015 in New Zealand. Dear Brothers and Sisters, Jesus is “the evangelizer par excellence and the Gospel in person” (Evangelii Gaudium, 209). His solicitude, particularly for the most vulnerable and marginalized, invites all of us to care for the frailest and to recognize his suffering countenance, Read more
No papal document in recent decades has generated as much pre-release interest as Laudato Si, an encyclical letter written by Pope Francis that the Vatican will release Thursday. Considering the author’s global popularity, the high profile created by his office, and the politically polarizing topic – the environment, especially his insistence on action on climate Read more