Giancarlo Pani SJ

When thinking of the Middle Ages, many will hold that the essence of asceticism was rejection of the world and complete condemnation of life lived in the world. This judgment is sometimes found in history books, but it is not entirely true. Suffice it to look at the few remaining letters of St. Francis of… Read the full article

On November 29, 2014, during his apostolic trip to Turkey, Pope Francis visited the Hagia Sophia Basilica in Istanbul. Hagia Sophia – in Turkish Aya Sofya – is an ancient monument that dominates the entire city, the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. At the end of the visit he wrote in Greek characters in the… Read the full article

The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd was developed in the 1950s in Rome by Sofia Cavalletti, a scholar of the bible and Judaism, with Gianna Gobbi, a Montessori educator, who were preparing together a small group of children for First Communion. They had been asked to do so  by Adele Costa Gnocchi, one of Maria… Read the full article

The Letter to the Galatians is an exceptional New Testament document. It was written by Paul at a time of great anguish, because a fervent community that the Apostle had worked hard to establish and to which he remained closely attached, found itself being misled by Judaizers. These had come from the People of Israel… Read the full article

In his New Year’s greetings to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, Pope Francis recalled the fifth centenary of the death of Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael), “the great artist from Urbino, who died in Rome on April 6, 1520”, and reflected: “he left us a vast legacy of inestimable beauty. Just as an artist’s… Read the full article

The issue of tolerance and intolerance has, for centuries now, been one of the most debated issues.[1] A number of important events occurred in 2019 that touch on this problem in a new way. Two in particular should be mentioned: the Year of Tolerance proclaimed by the United Arab Emirates, and the publication of the… Read the full article

The Book of Wisdom in the Old Testament, is little-known, poorly studied and occasionally used for prayer. Some extracts are present in the Liturgy of the Word and in the Breviary. Even in ancient times the book was rarely commented on. The Fathers of the Greek Church spoke little about it, Latin ones even less,… Read the full article

A century ago, on  July 31, 1919, Primo Levi, writer, witness and “martyr” of the Holocaust, was born in Turin.[1] After graduating in chemistry, he worked in that profession before and after his dramatic experience of the concentration camp. He was also a partisan, and was captured as one, sent to the camp of Fòssoli,… Read the full article