Searching for funding; small-town eucharistic procession

Two stories I meant to highlight earlier, but they’re still good to read:
– Searching for fund-raising ideas? GoodSearch is just a click away, from The Compass in the Diocese of Green Bay, Wis., describes an Internet search engine that donates part of its profits to non-profit organizations, including several participating parishes and schools in the [...]

Navidad (y cocina) Mexicana at the Vatican

The usual pre-dining question in Italy is: pizza or pasta? But at the Vatican yesterday, Italian tradition was nudged aside and officials dined on chicken in mole sauce, tostados, shrimp ceviche, three very festive flavors of margarita and much more.
 To celebrate the 15th anniversary of relaunching full diplomatic relations with the Vatican, Mexico sent over some of [...]

25-year-old Peace Corps volunteer honored at funeral Mass

Here’s a sad story just in from Illinois: Family and friends of Blythe O’Sullivan, a Peace Corps volunteer who died in Suriname earlier this month, gathered this week to honor and celebrate her life at her funeral Mass, according to the Catholic Explorer in the Diocese of Joliet. Among those paying tribute at the Mass [...]

Thoughts for Christmas

Of course you would expect the Catholic press to celebrate the Christmas season with plenty of excellent reflections. They’re coming in fast and furious now. Some examples:
– “12 practical ways to keep Christ in Christmas” in The Catholic Spirit in St. Paul, Minn., delivers some excellent ideas for Christians trying to keep their Christmas celebration [...]

Jesse Tree ornaments available for download

Here’s something rather unique: Our friends at Faith magazine in the Diocese of Erie, Pa., have posted free, downloadable Jesse Tree ornaments. Rich Papalia, Erie’s graphics manager and Webmaster, says the response has been tremendous. Here’s your chance to familiarize yourself with the Jesse Tree tradition and prepare your family for Christmas.

Vatican passes on makeover offer

The Vatican has no intention of hiring famed Italian movie and opera director Franco Zeffirelli to be the pope’s image-maker or to be an Inquisitor for religious films.
The Italian maestro told the Italian daily La Stampa over the weekend that he was putting himself at the Vatican’s disposal to revamp Pope Benedict’s “cold” delivery and [...]

Utah bishop’s latest podcast is on Advent

As far as I know, Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City and the staff of his diocesan paper, the Intermountain Catholic, are the only folks producing a regular podcast featuring the bishop in, as the title of the series says, “His Own Words.” (We’ve previously linked to the podcasts here, here, and here.) [...]

‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’: The story behind the song

That’s the headline on an article in this month’s St. Anthony Messenger magazine on the origins of the popular Christmas classic song “Do You Hear What I Hear?” The song, performed and recorded by dozens of artists, was not of European origins — it was written during the Cuban missle crisis in 1962, the article [...]

‘They’re absent from Mass, but they haven’t left the church’

If the subject of Mass attendance intrigues you, you’ll probably be interested in this: The Diocese of Providence, R.I., which according to the Rhode Island Catholic has a committee beginning to study Mass attendance rates in the state, brought an Australian church official to town to discuss a study he recently completed on Mass attendance “down [...]

Where has this year gone?

As if I needed any reminder of how fast this year is flying by, here’s a story out of Knoxville, Tenn., on preparations for sending busloads of students to Washington next month for the annual March for Life, from The East Tennessee Catholic. Is it really only a few weeks away?