Warm welcomes of “¡Qué gusto en verte de nuevo!” and “¿Cómo estás, todo bien?” greeted newcomers as they trickling into a common room on the St. Rita Catholic Community campus on Sept. 21. Spilling into their seats, those gathered soon turned their attention to Luisa Teresa Ravelo-Guedes, who had begun to sign herself “En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo.” The evening’s St. Rita Spanish Conversational Class had officially commenced.
A convert to Catholicism, Susan Platt of St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Parish in Garland said her faith has inspired her to love God through service to others, including through her decades of dedicated pro-life ministry to mothers and their children.
Beads clicked against tabletops as parishioners threaded them into rosaries, pausing for conversation and laughter as children and adults worked side by side. At St. Jude Catholic Parish on Aug. 26, more than 100 people took part in an effort that combined fellowship and faith, ultimately producing 600 World Mission Rosaries to be donated to people attending the Sept. 24 beatification of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in St. Louis, Missouri.
For Sean Myers, the Dallas-based national vice president of membership and leadership development for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, a normal Friday morning at 11 a.m. can mean a meeting.
Bells rang across downtown Dallas the morning of Sept. 11 as the Diocese of Dallas marked the 25th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks with a Day of Remembrance at the National Shrine Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
On the tree-shaded grounds of Southern Methodist University, members of the Catholic Campus Ministry at SMU huddled together in a campus minister’s office last fall to consider a topic of paramount importance: helping college students feel at home in the Catholic Church. The university years, they knew, are a time when many Christians drift further from faith. The ministry team hoped to help reverse that trend.
More than 60 couples gathered with families and friends at the National Shrine Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Aug. 29 for the Diocese of Dallas’ annual Golden Anniversary Mass, celebrated by Bishop Edward J. Burns to honor couples who have been married for 50 years.
Through childhood nightmares and serious illnesses, prayer has guided Diana Gump her whole life, providing her with abiding comfort and peace.
The Diocese of Dallas is asking parish leaders to look beyond the day-to-day work of ministry and consider a broader question: How are Catholics called to receive the Gospel, live it out, and carry it into the world?
As religious leaders, pastors, and ministers throughout the country gathered their people in prayer during those difficult days, the words of St. John Paul II offered a powerful message of faith and hope: “Sin, evil, terror, and death will not have the last word!”
From Catholicism to Protestantism and back again, Richard Valencia Jr.’s decades-long journey of faith has led him back to the Church truly founded by Christ, the parishioner of St. Joseph Catholic Parish in Waxahachie said.