The Vatican’s daily newspaper is the L’Osservatore Romano, founded in 1861with the approval of Pope Pius IX. It details the pope’s activities and appointments, prints the text of papal speeches and is widely and carefully read for insights into the attitudes of the...

Leaders from around the world have applauded the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza strip. The United Nations called for concrete actions to address the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to achieve true peace and reconciliation in...

On April 13, 2021, it was Memorial Day in Jerusalem, and the Israel president gave a night speech at the Western Wall, a sacred Jewish site. He honored those who died fighting for the country. It was also the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and nearby,...

In some southern areas of Italy, the Catholic Church and the Mafia have had a long and complicated history. Over the years, some Catholic priests have courageously opposed the crime families, and paid with their lives. However other priests have attended weddings,...

Rosario Livatino was a Catholic judge who was brutally killed by the mafia in 1990. He worked as a prosecutor in the 1980s at the Court of Agrigento, Sicily, dealing with the corrupt system of mafia bribes and kickbacks used on public works contracts. He became a...

Research conducted by the Vatican’s Bambino Gesú Children’s Hospital of Rome has made an important breakthrough in cancer research and has now discovered the one missing piece of information about the process through which cells, including cancer cells, mature and...

In 1869, the Bambino Gesú Children’s Hospital of Rome was founded from the initiative of the Salviati family with the help of friends and benefactors. Duchess Arabella Salviati was deeply moved when seeing young patients hospitalized alongside adults without any...

The Catholic Church like most organized religions has for centuries reached out to the deaf and hard of hearing. Today Catholics have a significant worldwide ministry for the deaf community; however, historically the Church’s position on deafness was not so kindly....

St. Peter’s Basilica has 11 chapels and 45 altars, of which many have been used every morning by priests to celebrate their daily Mass. The Code of Canon Law state that “priests are earnestly invited to offer the sacrifice of the Eucharist daily…” Priests generally...

For the second year in a row, the ceremonies of Holy Week and Easter, which Pope Francis presides over, were changed to streaming services online because of the covid-19 restrictions. The ceremonies were not open to the general public because of the need for social...

Why does the date of Easter which marks the date of Jesus’ death and resurrection move around from year to year? Sometimes it comes at the end of March and other times it happens in late April. It all has to do with the cycles of the moon. According to the Bible,...

In a 2019 interview which was just published in the Argentine newspaper La Nacion on Feb. 27, 2021, Pope Francis said that when he was a younger priest at age 42, seeing a psychiatrist helped him with anxiety. It was when he served as the Jesuit provincial (having...