The first commercially printed Christmas card is up for sale – a merry Victorian-era scene that scandalised some who denounced it as humbug when it first appeared in 1843. The card, being sold online starting Friday through a consortium run by Marvin Getman, a US-based dealer in rare books and manuscripts, depicts an English family Read more
Servant of God Floripes de Jesús, better known as Lola, was a Brazilian laywoman who lived on the Eucharist alone for 60 years. At the age of 16, she fell out of a tree. The accident changed her life. She was left paraplegic and “her body changed – she no longer felt hungry, thirsty or Read more
When asked by an interviewer why some people in the UK regard religious people as being “a little bit odd and weird singer Sir Cliff Richard responded: “I know and I don’t understand why because you have to have even more faith than any Christian on this planet [or] any Jew on this planet…to be Read more
US President-elect Joe Biden concluded his victory speech by reciting his deceased son Beau’s favourite popular Catholic hymn “On Eagles’ Wings” Biden lost Beau, an Iraq war veteran who had served as Delaware’s attorney general, in 2015 to a brain tumour at the age of 46. Read more
A social media post claims Pope Francis has cancelled the Bible and proposed a new book to take its place. The post features a photo of Pope Francis and a screenshot of an article from April 2018, which is headlined: “Pope Francis cancels The Bible and proposes to create a new book.” Continue reading
THE piercing gaze is reminiscent of the Mona Lisa while the beard and mouth bear a striking similarity to the artist’s portraits of himself. Italian researchers claim to have stumbled on the holy grail of the art world – a previously unknown work by Leonardo da Vinci, squirrelled away for centuries in a private collection. Read more
A Polish gym has dubbed itself a church in a bid to stay open under new anti-virus restrictions that have seen the fitness industry scramble for creative loopholes. “Because fitness classes aren’t allowed, starting today we’re offering religious gatherings for members of the Church of the Healthy Body,” the Atlantic Sports club said on Facebook. Read more
Carley Dunphey principal at St. Patrick School in Brighton, Michigan worked on the school’s roof after students surpassed 100,000 minutes of reading over two weeks during a read-a-thon. “I put a challenge out there to our students that if they reached 100,000 minutes reading as a combined total for our whole school, that I would Read more
A new cookbook offers recipes, some more than 1,000 years old, that have been served at the Vatican during the Advent and Christmas seasons. “The Vatican Christmas Cookbook” is written by chef David Geisser, who is a former member of the Vatican’s Swiss Guard, along with author Thomas Kelly. Read more
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone says exorcism prayers in Latin, because “tends to be more effective against the devil because he doesn’t like the language of the Church”. Cordileone recently performed an exorcism ceremony outside a Catholic church in San Rafael, where protesters had earlier toppled a statue of Father Junipero Serra. Serra was an Read more