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VATICAN CITY — Marking the 150th anniversary of St. Joseph being declared patron of the universal church, Pope Francis proclaimed a yearlong celebration dedicated to the foster father of Jesus.
VATICAN CITY — Mary's Immaculate Conception offers a glimpse to the promised life for all Christians who open their hearts to God and his grace, Pope Francis said.
BERLIN — In other years, the glitter of Nuremberg's Christmas market during Advent attracts around 2 million visitors from all over the world. This year, because of COVID19, everything is different, and the city estimates the economic damage caused by the cancellation of the markets at around 180 million euros (US$218.6 million).
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis approved new changes to the Vatican's financial watchdog agency concerning its internal governance, hiring procedures and its role as a "supervisory" body.
WASHINGTON — The busy year for the Supreme Court had the attention of the Catholic Church from major decisions it announced this past summer to oral arguments this fall around key issues impacting church belief and practice.
The sound of harmonizing voices filled the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington during the annual Festival of Lessons and Carols Dec. 6. The event featured Advent music performed by the St. Thomas More Cathedral Schola Handbell Choir. Different Scripture readings, or “lessons,” took listeners through Genesis, Isaiah and the Gospels.
Each year in Advent, we await in joyful hope the coming of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. In the first two weeks of this season, we celebrate our joyful anticipation of Christ’s coming in glory at the end of time, and we also give praise because the end of the ages is already with us. The everlasting kingdom that God promised has already begun, for the Son of God became flesh, and Christ, by his death and resurrection, has conquered sin and death.
“Synchronicity.” That’s the word one journalist used in a Nov. 3 Instagram post to describe the fact that Election Day fell on the feast day of St. Martin de Porres, the patron saint of social justice. It was a timely reminder, he felt, to vote with those ideals in mind, to imagine the kind of world the 17th-century Dominican lay brother was trying to bring about.
Since moving to Connecticut, I’ve grown to appreciate the seasons even more than when I lived in Virginia. Sure, northern Virginia has four distinct seasons, but they somehow seem more distinct here, the transitions between them sharper, clearer. And just as the natural seasons are more defined here, so are the liturgical seasons more clearly defined this year — the year of the everything unprecedented. It’s not the same old Advent come again. It’s new.
Long months of the vicious COVID-19 pandemic preceded the arrival of this year’s Advent season leading to Christmas. Neither Advent nor Christmas in 2020 will escape the pandemic’s shadow.
