Pope Francis has dwelt at length on the “pastoral conversion” of the parish. In Evangelii Gaudium (EG), quoting Vatican II, he wrote, “‘Every renewal of the Church essentially consists in an increase of fidelity to her own calling […] Christ summons the Church as she goes her pilgrim way… to that continual reformation of which… Read the full article
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
Tyger Tyger burning bright / In the forests of the night… / Did he who made the Lamb make thee? William Blake, Songs of Experience, 1794 The Covid-19 pandemic and other recent outbreaks of infectious diseases of animal origin have shed a new light on one of the most famous passages of Genesis, the story… Read the full article
Bishop Mario Grech is the new secretary general of the Synod of Bishops. Born in Malta in 1957, he was appointed Bishop of Gozo in 2005 by Benedict XVI. From 2013 to 2016 he was president of the Episcopal Conference of Malta. On October 2, 2019, Pope Francis appointed him pro-secretary general of the Synod… Read the full article
Eight years after his election, Pope Francis has written a new encyclical that brings together much of his previous teachings (cf. Fratelli Tutti, No. 5).[1] When he began his pontificate, the first idea Francis referred to was “fraternity.” He bowed his head in front of the people gathered in St. Peter’s Square and defined the… Read the full article
Introduction Addressing the members of the European Parliament on November 25, 2014, Pope Francis used an image suggested by the famous frescoes painted by Raphael in one of the Stanze di Raffaello in the Vatican. The School of Athens consists of a meeting between several pagan philosophers, from Greek antiquity until the time of the… Read the full article
The Bible begins with the garden planted by God in Eden (cf. Gen 2:8). It ends with the evocation of a garden-city, the heavenly Jerusalem: “In the middle of the city square and on either side of the river, there is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month;… Read the full article
The impulse toward renewal that Pope Francis is impressing on the life of believers concerns all the dimensions of the ecclesial community and reaches the various areas of the life of the Church. While the importance that the pope attaches to theology is often underestimated, in reality he cares very much about a serious and… Read the full article
