VATICAN CORNER On September 19, 2016, four prominent cardinals wrote a letter to Pope Francis and to Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, citing conflicting interpretations of the Apostolic Exhortation on Love in the...

VATICAN CORNER Pope Francis formally ended the Jubilee Year of Mercy by saying a prayer thanking God for the gift of the Jubilee year and then pulling the tall gilded Holy Doors to the Basilica closed. Workers immediately removed the door handles and then later...

VATICAN CORNER Before the U.S. presidential election, a fake news website - WTOE 5 NEWS falsely reported that Pope Francis had endorsed Republican candidate Donald Trump. That website is a fantasy news site where most of its articles are satire or pure fabrication....

VATICAN CORNER Staircases bind spaces together. They come in many forms: single run, switchback, L-shaped, curved, triangular, spiral and double spiral. The double spiral or double-helix consisting of two intertwined spirals is one of the most remarkable types, and...

VATICAN CORNER It is not often that a pope travels to Sweden, a country with just 113,000 Catholics, fewer than could fill St. Peter’s Square. The last pope to visit Sweden was Pope John Paul II during his 1989 tour of the Scandinavian countries.  Sweden is in the...

VATICAN CORNER Continued …Bramante, the original architect of the New Saint Peter’s Basilica, designed 4 piers to support the enormous weight of the domed roof. At the construction site, an artist from Florence named Michelangelo, observed that construction workers...

VATICAN CORNER Saint Peter’s Basilica is the largest church in the world at 163,180 sq. ft., and with a maximum capacity of 60,000 people. During the years 319 to 349 AD, the first Christian Emperor of Rome – Constantine built the first Saint Peter’s Basilica over the...

VATICAN CORNER The Vatican and the surrounding City of Rome are not considered to be at high seismic risk. The ground beneath them is free of faults, and volcanic activity is thankfully distant, but the historical record tells a different story, with Rome struck again...

VATICAN CORNER On Tuesday morning Oct. 4, 2016, on the feast day of St. Francis, Pope Francis made a surprise visit to those people affected by the recent earthquake in central Italy. He even caught local officials by surprise. He told the residents of Amatrice “I...

VATICAN CORNER Over the weekend, Sept. 30 - October 2, 2016 Pope Francis made his 16th trip as Pope, visiting his 23rd and 24th countries: Georgia and Azerbaija two former Soviet republics located between the Black & Caspian Seas, south of Russia, north of Turkey,...

VATICAN CORNER It would seem that Pope  Francis' busy schedule would not allow him time to  compose all of the many speeches he must give both at  the Vatican and when on his foreign trips. Like any  modern head of state, there are probably people who  assist him in...

VATICAN CORNER Each month of the Holy Year of Mercy, Pope Francis has spent one Friday afternoon outside the Vatican performing an act of mercy. He has made surprise visits to a group of migrants, to a recovery community for former drug addicts and alcoholics, to a...