The Indonesian police have detained seven people in a failed plot to attack Pope Francis, who wrapped up the first leg of his 12-day Asia-Pacific tour in the archipelago on Sept 6.A total of seven people were detained, mostly on Sept 2 and 3, in Jakarta, in the outlying cities of Bogor and Bekasi, West Sumatra province and Bangka Belitung Islands province, according to the media statement issued on Sept 6 by Indonesia’s national police anti-terrorism squad Detachment-88.

Pope Francis touched down in Papua New Guinea on Friday, the second country of his 12-day apostolic journey to Asia and Oceania, following emerging reports of a failed attempt on his life during his Indonesia visit. Landing in Jacksons International Airport in the country’s capital, Port Moresby, in the evening (local time) of Sept. 6 after a six-hour flight from Jakarta, Indonesia, the pope was greeted on the tarmac by women belonging to the Mekeo tribe wearing traditional dress.

One of the most popular religious autobiographies of all time, this Voyage Classics edition of Story of a Soul by St. Thérèse of Lisieux, highlights the Carmelite saint’s attraction to the sea and her love of the spiritual symbolism behind it. As she wrote in her autobiography, “the symbol of a ship always delights me, and helps me to bear with my exile. Does not the Wise Man tell us: ‘Life is like a ship that passeth through the waves; when it is gone, the trace thereof cannot be found?’”

The world’s attention on Venezuela has been focused in the last weeks on the fallout from a highly contested presidential election that both the ruling party and its opponents claim to have won, the ensuing persecution of critics and the arrest warrant against the former opposition presidential candidate.

Recent observations by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle suggest that the charge that Christian missionaries are agents of colonialism has not yet been laid to rest (see Cardinal Tagle defends missionaries). In reality, this is an accusation typically made by those who are themselves “colonializing” by trying to turn the third-world poor into agents of, or supports for, Western secularism.

When I became Catholic in 2006, the New Atheism was at its height. New Atheism taught young people that religion is superstitious and irrational and, therefore, should not be tolerated. Proponents advocated an “antitheist” view that criticism of religion using, what they considered, rational argument, especially where religion and society intersect in politics and education...

Why are some people kind? This question is especially though of course not exclusively pertinent in forming the young. I think we take kindness for granted, forgetting both its central importance and the need to cultivate it, in self and others. “We are for the most part unhappy, because the world is an unkind world.” So wrote Fr. Frederick Faber, a noted author...

The subject always deserves consideration, but two recent articles on sex abuse within the Church are worth discussion. The first, published by Crux, declares — sadly, to the surprise of no one — “Abuse crisis in the Catholic Church shows no signs of abating.” The second came via OSV News: Catholics in the Sicilian city of Enna are protesting a diocesan cover-up of abuses against minors, committed by a local priest while he was still a seminarian, between 2009 and 2013.

Vice President Kamala Harris leads among Catholic voters over former president Donald Trump, according to the findings of a new EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research survey two months away from the presidential election.The poll, conducted from Aug. 28-30, surveyed 1,000 Catholics and has a margin of error of /- 3 percentage points.

Today, the Catholic Church celebrates the 27th anniversary of the death and birth into eternal life of St. Teresa of Calcutta, the great foundress of the Missionaries of Charity. She once said to her religious sisters, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. God still loves the world and sends you and me to be his love.” That sums up...