An actor who recently portrayed a beloved saint on screen has now fully come into the Catholic Church in real life. Shia LaBeouf, a Hollywood veteran and star of director Abel Ferrara’s film “Padre Pio,” received the sacrament of confirmation, completing his initiation into the Catholic faith, during the New Year holiday weekend, according to announcements posted Jan. 2 to Facebook and Instagram by the Capuchin Franciscans’ Western American Province.
Nation
Two years ago over the course of a Friday night Dec. 10-11, a series of tornadoes struck western Kentucky, killing 57 with additional fatalities in Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee and Missouri and damaging and destroying several thousand residences as well as nearly 200 commercial buildings. Just one day before area residents officially observed the outbreak’s second anniversary, tornadoes ripped through middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky inflicting another weather disaster Dec. 9 just weeks before Christmas.
Aldo Barletta of St. Mary Parish in Marysville is the new vice president of Vincentian spiritual growth and enrichment for the national Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
The University of Notre Dame has selected a new president who said he hopes to position the school as an “ever-greater engine of insight, innovation and impact.” The Catholic university’s board of trustees announced Dec. 4 that Holy Cross Father Robert A. Dowd has been named Notre Dame’s 18th president, effective July 1.
Grim developments on the southern U.S. border and the “frustrating” lack of immigration reform were on the minds of some 1,500 Southern California Catholics at the annual Mass in Recognition of All Immigrants Sept. 17 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.