Mary McGlone | National Catholic Reporter =May 16, 2015

No matter what the Gospel says, picking up snakes is never going to be part of my mission plan. Now that I think about it, I’m also pretty reluctant to pick fights with demons, so the commentaries that say Mark didn’t really write this ending to his Gospel offer me a welcome justification for avoiding those adventures. Most scholars think that the Gospel of Mark ended at Verse 8 of Chapter 16, which states that the women who discovered Jesus’ empty tomb “said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

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Simone Campbell | Global Sisters Report-April 27, 2015

Congress has a responsibility to create federal budgets that are both morally and economically responsible – budgets that address the needs of all, not just the moneyed few. Current House and Senate budget proposals fail to fulfill these requirements.

Sadly, this is nothing new. In response to the reality of years of skewed budget priorities, my organization (NETWORK), A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby) joined a coalition of 37 faith groups representing Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions. We came together to demand that our elected officials formulate federal budget priorities that promote the well-being of all, especially those who are poor and marginalized.

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Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service |  April 27, 2015

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis offered his prayers to all those affected by a deadly earthquake in Nepal and encouraged rescue and emergency workers in their efforts.

More than 3,600 people were known to have been killed and more than 6,500 others injured after a magnitude-7.8 earthquake hit a mountainous region near Kathmandu Saturday.

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Joyce Meyer, Global Sisters Report| April 8, 2015

Early morning in February I walked into the beautiful conference center of the Divine Word Missionaries in Nemi, Italy, a small city about an hour outside of Rome. The center is perched overlooking a glistening crater lake in the mountains that, if your room is on the lucky-side, you can see the great city. Day and night the view is spectacular. It was a chilly day with light rain turning to snow, but this did not deter the 44 sister delegates arriving with enthusiasm from Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States.

These women religious leaders represented 29 regions of the world and 80 percent of religious worldwide. Their goal was to find common issues that they could address together, believing that global solidarity is the way forward to making significant changes in systems of society and the church.

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Joshua McElwee, National Catholic Reporter|March 29, 2015

ROME Pope Francis has called on Christians around the world to use Holy Week as a time to reflect and exemplify the humility of Christ, and to reject a worldliness that he says proposes “another way” of vanity, pride and success.

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March 18, 2015

Joyce Meyer, Global Sisters Report

Young women once again being sold into slavery! This was the story from Change.org recently describing ISIS’ new tactic. Every day we are greeted with another story about women and girls being sold or trafficked somewhere in the world. And each time, I feel a kind of helplessness. What can I do? It seems such an overwhelming disease in our human family. Although we know from the Ebola epidemic that physical diseases are painfully difficult to eradicate, those that drive persons to destroy others spiritually seems even more so. Between 26 and 30 million persons are currently experiencing the consequences of this spiritual sickness in our world.

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March 17, 2015

Judith Sudilovsky, Catholic News Service

JERUSALEM (CNS) — Several pilgrim groups gathered in a sunny courtyard in Jerusalem’s Old City. They were preparing to follow a tradition reaching back at least to the fifth century: walking along the Via Dolorosa, through the cobbled streets of Jerusalem’s Old City.

The Via Dolorosa represents the route taken by Jesus on the way to his crucifixion, until he was laid in the tomb. Although the route followed for this devotion has changed over the centuries, the need and desire of the Christian faithful to walk in Jesus’ footsteps has not. The current route was probably formalized in the 18th century.

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March 5, 2015

Mark Pattison, Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Is the Shroud of Turin real, as many Catholics believe? Or is it a product of the 14th century, as suggested by tests conducted of strips taken from the shroud?

Does it matter at all — and, if it does, how much does it matter?

Those are the kinds of questions addressed in a new CNN series, “Finding Jesus,” which airs at 9 p.m. EDT Sundays through Easter, April 5.

Jesuit Father James Martin, one of a host of scholars and scientists interviewed for the series, said for the series that “in my gut” the shroud is real.

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Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — When people trust in the world more than in God, their heart becomes numb and their eyes blind to those in need, Pope Francis said.

“Worldliness transforms souls, it makes (people) lose touch with reality: They live in a fake world they have made,” he said March 5 in his homily at a morning Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where he lives

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March 4, 2014
Michael Shawn Winters, National Catholic Reporter

When my dad entered St. Mary’s parish school in Jewett City, Connecticut, he did not speak English, only Polish, and so he had to repeat first grade. The nuns oversaw my dad’s transition from Polish farmhouse to American mainstream. The middle of nine children, he was the first to go to college and by the time I came on the scene, he was as American as apple pie. A few weeks ago, he told me he was going to Mass at Sagrada Corazon church about fifteen minutes from our home, because he had requested a Mass there for the mother of a Spanish-speaking friend of the family.

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