In the 1980s, Wayne Pearson was reportedly the first person to have used LOL while responding to a friend’s joke in a pre-Internet digital chat room called Viewline. Instead of writing “hahaha,” as he had done before when he found something humorous, Pearson instead typed “LOL” to symbolize extreme laughter. A lesser-known initialism from the Read more
Eighty-seven-year-old Father John Bok was a physics teacher earlier in his life. Still, he just can’t wrap his head around the physics of how another car hurdled his own on his way to celebrate Sunday Mass in October. “It’s a miracle,” the Franciscan priest told CNA Tuesday of the near-death experience. Now retired — although Read more
The path to New Zealand sainthood of missionary Mother Meri Hōhepa Suzanne Aubert has been delayed. A Vatican medical council concluded recently that a potential miracle attributed to her can be explained by medical science. Sister Margaret Anne Mills, leader of the Sisters of Compassion in Island Bay, Wellington, says the medical council’s ruling means Read more
Pope Francis advanced the sainthood cause Tuesday of an Italian laywoman who died in 1997 after touching the lives of thousands of people despite suffering from progressive paralysis. The pope authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints Sept. 29 to promulgate a decree recognizing a miracle attributed to Gaetana “Nuccia” Tolomeo, paving the way Read more
An inquiry is under way into the ethics of endorsing a miracle healing a child. The inquiry is being conducted by the Kerala chapter of the Indian Medical Association. Dr V K Sreenivasan, a paediatrician in Kerala, endorsed the miraculous recovery of a premature baby born at the hospital in 2009. Sreenivasan says the infant Read more
A few prayers to Blessed John Henry Newman became a “constant dialogue” and then a desperate response to an emergency for Melissa Villalobos of Chicago. Her healing, which saved her life and the life of her unborn child, was accepted as the miracle needed for the 19th-century British cardinal’s canonization. Pope Francis announced July 1 Read more
An Egyptian Muslim who planned to kill his cousin for converting to Christianity has shared how he embraced the religion he once hated after Jesus delivered a powerful message to him in a dream. Read more
Pope Francis has agreed to canonise Blessed John Henry Newman, Blessed Maria Teresa Chiramel Mankidiyan and Fr Salvatore Vittorio Emilio Moscoso Cardenas (martyr). He has also declared several people to have lived lives of heroic virtue. Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. He was a 19th century theologian, poet, Catholic priest and Read more
Australian saint Mary McKillop has received thanks from a man she cured from Parkinson’s disease 10 years ago. On 18 July Ricky Peterson of Kansas City, Kansas revisited St Mary MacKillop’s tomb with a prayer of thanksgiving for the seemingly miraculous event that had changed his life a decade earlier. Peterson first knelt at the Read more
The miraculous recovery of a 13 year-old boy has his mother singing praises to God and sharing her story. Doctors had already declared Trenton McKinley brain-dead and were set to harvest his organs to donate to five other children. McKinley says he was in Heaven walking with Jesus and a sibling who died before he was Read more