From the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A: Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. (Matt 5:10-12).

The first attendees have arrived at the March for Life. Despite the cold temperatures, these students from John Paul the Great University are looking forward to marching in support of the unborn. This is the school’s first time attending the annual march.

The condemnation of Christian Zionism by the Council of Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem is prompting varied reactions by Catholics in the U.S., Israel, and Rome. In a statement last week, the council — comprised of the leaders of the historic Christian churches in the Holy City, including the Latin patriarch; the Maronite, Melkite, Syriac, and Armenian Catholic patriarchs...

Given how much of life is taken up with work, I think we give too little reflection to a key question: what really is, or should be, the point of our working? We often undertake our work simply as something that must be done. But the intention and so also the spirit with which we do it makes a significant and even essential difference...

The patron saint of journalists is St. Francis de Sales – whose feast is today, 24 January. The Holy Father’s annual message for the World Day of Social Communications is dated for the feast in his honor. St. Francis (1567-1622) was certainly a writer, but not every writer is a journalist. He was assigned the patronage because, barred from entering his own city of Geneva...

Pope Leo XIV warned of the risks that go hand in hand with information in the digital age and urged journalists never to succumb “to the temptation of the trivial” or to fake news that creates confusion about what’s true or false. The pope made his comments in a message sent on the occasion of the 30th anniversary...

Before we get on to the news, I would like to pause for a moment and ask you to please offer a prayer for the repose of the soul of John Allen Jr., who died yesterday at the age of 61. John, for any readers who do not know, and I doubt there can be many, was — for decades — an inescapable presence in the world of Catholic media, and especially in the arena of Vatican reporting.

My friend arrived at our local place about half an hour after the Texans-Steelers game ended. People had already run through the five stages of grief, I told her, and gotten to the final stage, acceptance. “I got to acceptance on week one,” she said. Everyone who’d actually watched the game there began it feeling hopeful. But eventually we all saw the Steelers’ reality, and what I suspect most people secretly thought would happen happened.