Pope Leo XIV arrived April 21 in Equatorial Guinea, the fourth and final country of his 11-day apostolic journey in Africa, where the pope met the country’s longtime ruler and urged the country’s civil authorities to choose justice over power, quoting St. Augustine’s “City of God.”
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St. Francis of Assisi was declared a saint nearly 800 years ago, just two years after his death. Not until much more recently — about 50 years ago — was the beloved 13th-century Italian friar called the patron of ecology.
It was baseball, in a sense, that first took Walker Alsobrooks away from the Mass — packing his Saturdays and Sundays so full that his parents stopped taking him to church each weekend — but it was baseball, too, that had a hand in leading him back, according to the newly baptized University of Dallas student athlete, who was initiated into the Catholic Church this Easter Vigil.
Christians in Pakistan are protesting a controversial court ruling that upheld the marriage of a 13-year-old Christian girl to a 30-year-old Muslim man, a case widely known as “Maria’s case.” The girl’s family says she was abducted and forcibly converted.
Flying over the west coast of central Africa on April 21, Pope Leo XIV paused to honor his predecessor on the first anniversary of Pope Francis’ death, remembering the Argentine pope’s witness to mercy and closeness to the poor.
ope Leo XIV traveled to the heart of Angola’s diamond country April 20, urging the tens of thousands gathered at the papal Mass in the country’s northeast to trust that “Christ hears the cry of the people” in the face of evil.
On a recent Tuesday evening, a small group gathered online via Zoom to study the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians. The discussion focused on a passage describing how St. Paul organized a collection to support struggling communities, marking an early example of solidarity across distance and difference.
The police chief of a southwest suburb of Chicago, where one of Pope Leo XIV’s brothers lives, confirmed to OSV News that his department is conducting “an ongoing and active investigation” of an unsubstantiated bomb threat at John Prevost’s house.
Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass for more than 120,000 people in Cameroon’s largest city on April 17, urging “beloved children of the African continent” to share God’s love by feeding the hungry and offering the spiritual nourishment of “the bread of life.”
Before a child opens a textbook, walks down a school hallway, or puts pencil to paper in a classroom, she has already received an education in the important lessons of life from a woman, said Sister Sandra Helton, SSND, as she welcomed more than 300 registered attendees to the 14th annual Women’s Leadership Luncheon at Brookhaven Country Club in Farmers Branch on March 25.