2026

(Pope March 13, 2013 to April 21, 2025) Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born December 17, 1936, the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina. After studying to become a chemical technician, he worked briefly in the food-processing industry but felt called to the church. When he was about 21 years old, he suffered a severe bout […]

(Pope April 19, 2005 to February 28, 2013) Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born April 16, 1927 at Marktl am In, Germany.  His father was a policeman and his mother a hotel cook. The youngest of three children, Ratzinger was six years old when the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933.  In 1941, peer pressure

(Pope October 16, 1978-April 2, 2005) Karol Józef Wojtyła was born on May 18, 1920, in Wadowice, Poland, the youngest of three children. Although he was born into a loving family, his early life was marked by suffering and loss. His older sister, Olga, died in infancy and, by the time Karol was twelve, his

(Pope August 26, 1978 to September 28, 1978) Albino Luciani was born of a poor family on October 17, 1912, in Forno di Canale, Italy.  He was ordained a priest in 1935.  Appointed deputy director of the seminary in the Belluno diocese, he taught moral theology, canon law and sacred art.  He earned a doctorate

(Pope June 21, 1963 to August 6, 1978) Giovanni Battista Montini was born September 26, 1897 in Concesio, Italy.  The son of a middle-class lawyer and mother, Montini was educated mainly at home because of frail health. Later he studied in Brescia. Ordained a priest on May 29, 1920, he was sent by his bishop

During these weeks after Easter, we have journeyed with the early Church, first through its tenuous beginnings in Jerusalem, then spreading to the Jewish communities throughout the Mediterranean. We have witnessed the conversion of Saul, his being renamed as Paul, and how Paul took the Good News to the non-Jew gentiles, even to the fringes

If you live on this earth, you can be sure of one thing: you will witness evil. We should expect it and be prepared to react. How then should we respond to evil? Hate it:   Romans 12:9 tells us “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” This may

Be of sober spirit, be on the alert.  Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). I do not talk much, in these Daily Reflections, about evil in the world.   Perhaps that is because I do not like to face that reality.  The presence of evil in

It seems that ethnic, racial, and religious violence is undergoing a revival. The past decade has witnessed a sharp increase in violent sectarian or religious tensions. These range from Islamic extremists waging global jihad, power struggles between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Middle East, persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar and outbreaks of violence between

Today’s first reading (Acts 14:5-18), about Paul and Barnabas in Lystra, is worth lingering over. The Lectionary text ends with a cliff-hanger, making us want to continue reading to see how the story ends.   Halfway through the first mission trip, Paul and Barnabas cause such an uproar in Iconium that a crowd of Jews