There was a time, for a very long time and a long time ago, when the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham was one of the major places of pilgrimage in the whole of Christendom. By the sixteenth-century, the holy shrine at Walsingham, in the English shire of Norfolk, had welcomed pilgrims for more than 450 years...

The White House marked the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception — the first of two major Marian feasts this week with a direct connection to the sanctity of unborn human life — with a presidential message celebrating the occasion...

Pope Leo XIV said President Donald Trump’s plan to end Russia’s war against Ukraine threatens to break apart the alliance between Europe and the United States. The Pope commented to reporters after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at Castel Gandolfo.

I’ve told this story more times than I can count, and it never gets old. What happened changed my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I first crossed paths with Karl Keating in early 1987 after reading a short, unremarkable notice in our diocesan newspaper about a public debate on the papacy between Catholic attorney Karl Keating and one Bill Jackson...

Feast date: Dec 16

Born in 931 in Burgundy, France as the daughter of King Rudolph II of Burgundy, Adelaide was promised in marriage when she was only two years old, to a man named Lothaire, the son and heir of his enemy, Hugh of Provence.

Lothaire was killed when still young, and Adelaide was to have a tumultuous life that paralleled the struggle for political power of the times, something she had come to symbolize. She appealed to Otho the Great of Germany for help.

Having been sought after by various kings and nobles after Lothaire’s death, she was finally married by Otho the Great of Germany, who had invaded Italy.

After Otto’s death on May 7, 973, Adelaide exercised influence over her son Otto II until their estrangement in 978, when she left the court and lived in Burgundy with her brother King Conrad. At Conrad’s urging, she became reconciled with her son, and, before his death in 983, Otto appointed her his regent in Italy. With her daughter-in-law, Empress Theophano, she upheld the right of her three-year-old grandson, Otto III, to the German throne. She lived in Lombardy from 985 to 991, when she returned to Germany to serve as sole regent after Theophano’s death (991). In 991, Adelaide was invested as the Regent of the Empire, and she used her power as the effective empress to increase evangelization efforts, especially in northern Europe, and built many monasteries and churches, and also gave much aid the poor. She governed until Otto III came of age in 994, and, when he became Holy Roman emperor in 996, she retired from court life, devoting herself to founding churches, monasteries, and convents.

She died in 999 at the monastery of Seltz, Alsace, and was canonized in 1097 by Pope Urban II.

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Using 5,000 drones, the company Sky Elements lit up the night sky over Mansfield, Texas, recreating the image of the Holy Family.

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