Focus

• Open letter to English-speaking bishops

  Mar 20, 2015

  One of the great blessings in my life has come from teaching (and learning) from many of you when you were seminarians or young priests and took courses with me in Rome (1973–2006) and elsewhere.

  

• Synod’s difficult survey on family life

  Mar 20, 2015

  The Church is conducting a survey on family life. This is the first time that a Pope has invited the entirety of the faithful to be an essential part of the Church’s discernment and conversation.

  

• Food for Thought

  Mar 13, 2015

  There’s a humorous card making the rounds on the Internet and it says: “Next year for Lent, I'm going to give up being so miserable about what I gave up for Lent.”

  
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  On becoming a living sacrifice during Lent

  Mar 13, 2015

  We think a lot about sacrifice during Lent. Generally, we think of it in terms of giving up something.

  
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  Figuring out the real sacrifice of Lent

  Mar 13, 2015

  Everyone knows that Lent is about sacrifice. But generally, the notion of sacrifice in our pampered modern world is, to say the least, a bit impoverished.

  
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  Surveys on the October Synod of Bishops

  Mar 13, 2015

  Recently, the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) did a story on the surveys being conducted by all the dioceses of the United States in preparation for October’s Synod on the Family.

  
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  Fear masking itself as piety

  Mar 13, 2015

  It is easy to mistake piety for the genuine response that God wants of us, that is, to enter into a relationship of intimacy with Him and then try to help others have that same experience.

  
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  What’s really miraculous about Pope Francis?

  Mar 12, 2015

  This week I was in New York for publicity on the launch of my new book, The Francis Miracle: Inside the Transformation of the Pope and the Church.

  
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  Why I’m renewing my devotion to St Joseph today

  Mar 12, 2015

  St Teresa of Avila said that St Joseph never refused her anything on his feast day, March 19. March 10 marks the first day of the novena to St Joseph.

  

• Food for Thought

  Mar 06, 2015

  In a March 2013 column for The New York Times, Catholic writer Maria de Lourdes Ruiz Scaperlanda wrote about Lent, particularly about one of the themes that we sometimes like to avoid and find hard to reconcile: suffering and hardship.