Between 1769 – 1823, the Franciscan friars built a total of 21 missions stretching for 700 miles between San Diego and Sonoma, Calif., most of them thanks to the extraordinary charity and leadership of Saint Junipero Serra. Father Junipero Serra brought Christ to the Indians of California and also protection. He did not want the…
July 1, 2021
(originally posted Oct 13, 2015)—Well, as my T-shirt proclaims, “Pope Francis in America…. I WAS THERE.” I was specifically there for the canonization of Fr. Serra, an old family friend so to speak. Serra and I go way back–I knew him even before he was venerable. One of the happy sources of this connection was…
CNA—Catholics may know St. Anthony of Padua as a Franciscan friar, a Doctor of the Church, and the patron saint of lost items – but only one person has ever seen St. Anthony in an approved apparition. In 1664, Szymon the weaver – hailing from the little Polish village Radecznica – encountered St. Anthony in…
CNA—An Italian nun who was stabbed to death by three teenage girls was beatified on Sunday, after Pope Francis declared her a martyr, killed “in hatred of the faith.” Sr. Maria Laura Mainetti was beatified on June 6, the anniversary of her murder, in Chiavenna, the northern Italian town where she was killed in the…
WSJ—The San Gabriel, Calif., Fire Department and Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently confirmed what many had long suspected: The fire that almost destroyed Mission San Gabriel Arcángel last year was arson. John David Corey Jr., 57, was charged with the crime last week and faces up to 14 years in prison if convicted. Founded in…
CNA—On the 29th anniversary of the first Eucharistic miracle that took place in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires’ Santa María parish, the community received a first class relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis. Three Eucharistic miracles have taken place in this parish, in May 1992, July 1994, and August 1996. The history and investigation of these…
CNA—Pope Francis declared a blind 14th-century Italian lay Dominican a saint Saturday using a process known as “equipollent” canonization. The Holy See press office said April 24 that the pope had authorized the extension of the liturgical cult of Blessed Margaret of Castello to the universal Church during a Saturday morning meeting with Cardinal Marcello…
CNA—Early on March 24, 1944, a Nazi patrol surrounded the home of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma on the outskirts of the village of Markowa in southeast Poland. They discovered eight Jewish people who had found refuge with the couple and executed them. The Nazi police then killed the pregnant Wiktoria, who was 32 years old,…
CNA—More than 50 years after the death of Padre Pio, one of the last journalists to interview the saint has reflected on the saint’s hope and suffering. Renzo Allegri, the author of the biography “Man of Hope,” visited the Italian saint a year before he died in 1968. He said Pio’s suffering was difficult to…
CNA—With the beatification of Carlo Acutis in Assisi last Saturday, October 10, 2020, the Catholic Church now has its first “Blessed” who loved Super Mario and Pokémon, but not as much as he loved the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. “To be always united with Jesus, this is my life program,” Carlo Acutis…
CNA—A Hawaiian Catholic catechist said that St. Damien of Molokai is a “hero” to the Hawaiian people, after an outspoken congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), claimed the statue honoring him in the U.S. Capitol is part of colonialism and “patriarchy and white supremacist culture.” St. Damien “gave his life” serving the isolated leper colony at Kalaupapa…
St. Catherine of Siena was born March 25th, 1347, when the world stood at the brink of the very pandemic for which the word “quarantine” was invented. In Italian, “quaranta giorni” – forty days – was the allotted time that ships were required to remain offshore before landing. The Bubonic Plague, also known as the…
St. Basil the Great (born in Turkey, 329-379 A.D.) has much to say to Catholic business men and women of today, enmeshed as we are in a very secular and increasingly anti-Christian world and work culture. Before sharing St. Basil’s exhortation to the faithful of his day, a time that was not unlike our times…
In reflecting on this season of the year, I have often wondered how a Martian reporter would do a story on Christmas in the United States. If one only had the dominant cultural icons of TV, movies, news media and retail stores, my guess is that the Martian viewing audience wouldn’t have a clue as…
CNA—The Diocese of Peoria announced Monday that Venerable Fulton Sheen will be beatified Dec. 21 at the city’s Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception. Sheen had been ordained a priest of the diocese in that cathedral Sept. 20, 1919. “It seems entirely fitting that the Beatification will take place at the end of…
The feast of St. Monica occurs the day before the feast of her son, St. Augustine. Her tears, prayers, and sacrifices over many years helped bring about his conversion. It is only proper that their feasts are celebrated close together. Monica was born in North Africa. As a child she lived with her family, but…
CNA—On Aug. 15, Catholics around the world mark the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, commemorating the end of her earthly life and her assumption into Heaven. But while the feast day is a relatively new one, the history of the holiday – and the mystery behind it – has its roots in the earliest…
CNA, CBJ—In recent years, some Catholics have been concerned by pushes from governments in locations such as Louisiana and Australia, and now California, who challenge the secrecy of the sacrament of confession, asking that priests betray the solemnity of penitents’ confessions when they hear of serious crimes in the confessional. However, the words of Saint…
A cardinal dispatched by the Vatican to Algeria has held an unusual beatification ceremony for 19 monks, nuns and other Roman Catholics who were killed during Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s. The ceremony, on Saturday in the western city of Oran, was the first in the Muslim world, according to Algeria’s religious affairs minister.…
CNA—Below are brief biographies on the lives of each of the seven new saints canonized by Pope Francis Sunday, as well as photos of each saint’s banner currently on display at the Vatican. Blessed Pope Paul VI Born Giovanni Battista Montini in 1897 and ordained a priest in 1920, he did graduate studies in literature,…
