The Easter season is here, and that means more visitors to the Vatican. Today on the Catholic News Service Vatican Report, Carol Glatz and John Thavis take a look at pilgrims in Rome. To download Flash Player please click here ...read more

There are moments when individuals feel great faith, an unwavering and undeniable conviction that there is a power greater than us that governs this world and the next. For those fortunate enough, they find the presence of this faith within them on a constant basis. But for others who lack the discipline and find themselves ...read more

On Good Friday evening at 8:50 pm, I was stepping delicately across the san pietrini (cobblestones) of Rome, heading towards home, huffing and puffing over a series of inter-cultural miscalculations and miscommunications, trying desperately to contain my bubbling emotions. Let’s just say that had someone—anyone—stopped me on my way, they probably would have been the ...read more

In 2007, I began working on a project commissioned by the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board in Ontario: to create 10 short vignettes that would highlight how 10 virtues (which they had pre-selected) are being put into action in their school communities.  We called this joint venture The World I Know:  Virtues in Action.  It ...read more

On this day in 1901, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati blessed the city of Turin, Italy with his birth. Born to an upper-class family, he constantly went against the currents of his culture with the conviction of a true Christian. He never became a great intellectual, or a prolific writer, or the founder of a religious ...read more

As Pope Benedict XVI nears the fifth anniversary of election as the Successor of Peter, the Knights of Columbus are inviting the faithful to join in a novena for the Holy Father.  It begins April 11th, this Sunday (Divine Mercy Sunday), and ends April 19th, the anniversary of his election. Please find the novena prayer ...read more

The Shroud of Turin, which goes on public display this spring, is the focus of a permanent exhibit in Rome. Catholic News Service’s John Thavis reports. To download Flash Player please click here ...read more

Every year, Pope Benedict XVI celebrates the Via Crucis (the Way of the Cross) from Rome’s Coliseum. Tonight on Perspectives, S+L’s Vatican correspondent Alicia Ambrosio retraces the history of the Stations of the Cross, and how it came to be that the Holy Father would lead this devotion in a former site of Christian persecution. ...read more

Archbishop Anthony Mancini, the Archbishop of Halifax and Apostolic Administrator of Yarmouth, and Archbishop Richard Smith of Edmonton are among the bishops of Canada who have commented on the abuse scandals.  Like Toronto’s Archbishop Thomas Collins, both mentioned it in their Chrism Mass homilies. The Archbishop of Halifax admitted that the Church is facing her ...read more

As we enter into a particularly focused period of prayer with the beginning of the Easter Triduum today, let us keep our Holy Father’s intentions in our prayers this month. Pope Benedict’s general prayer intention for April is: That every tendency to fundamentalism and extremism may be countered by constant respect, by tolerance and by ...read more