In Assisi, one of the main pilgrim draws is a tiny church dwarfed by its expansive surroundings, the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels near Assisi, Italy.
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Catholics from every inhabited continent gathered in Castel Gandolfo July 19 as Pope Leo XIV led the Angelus prayer from the papal summer palace in the small Italian hill town, where the pope reflected on how the kingdom of God grows through “the little things of daily life.”
Life is a journey that unfolds one day at a time. This summer, I found myself reflecting deeply on what it means to trust that journey. My thoughts were not centered on where I stand today, but on where God is leading me. I had a quiet conversation with him within my heart, a conversation about my spiritual life, my relationship with him, and the mission he continues to shape in me as his priest and servant. I asked myself how God wants to use me to proclaim his Gospel, not only to others but also to my own soul.
In late October, a little more than a month after Archbishop Fulton Sheen is to become “blessed,” the sixth beatification on American soil will take place — this time of five Franciscan martyrs who died in 1597 in the Georgia seedbed of American Catholicism.
When Pope Leo XIV sat down to lunch with people experiencing homelessness and poverty at Castel Gandolfo this month, he offered a model that one Catholic organization says any parish can follow.
In his seven visits to America during his papacy, St. John Paul II often shared his mastery of the nation’s foundational documents — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
God came to my house today. Those were the words spoken by a young boy named Cesar as he looked at me. I did not hear them myself; another missionary later shared them with me. Cesar, perhaps 10 years old, has cerebral palsy. He comes from a poor yet deeply loving family living in the heart of Mexico.
The Society of Jesus — commonly known as the Jesuits — in the United States and Canada will bring together its five current novitiates spread throughout the continent into two new novitiates starting in 2028, with one of the new novitiates to be located in Detroit.
When the 8:21 a.m. train left Rome’s Termini Station to Castel Gandolfo July 12, people packed like sardines into the regional cars. While two or three passengers got off at stations along the way, most disembarked at Castel Gandolfo and headed up the hill to see Pope Leo XIV during the Sunday Angelus prayer — the first this summer to be said from his lakeview residence.
On the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, Estefania received a visit that she felt came to answer her prayers. On May 13, missionaries from Dallas arrived at her home in southwest Puebla, Mexico, bringing a brand-new wheelchair for her son, Omar, along sandy, gravel roads.