Welcome to S+L’s Weekly News Round-Up. As the Director of Marketing and Communications here at S+L, many interesting Catholic news stories and articles come across my desk on a daily basis. Some of them we’ll cover on our different television programs and others I’d like to share with you on this blog.

This blog column is where I’ll point out some of the more interesting news pieces that I’ve come across over the past week. Enjoy!

Ok, let's talk about “selfies” for a moment. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, a selfie is a self-portrait photograph taken with a camera phone, often shared on social networking sites. Taking a selfie has become such an accepted genre of photography that even the Pope often joins in on group selfies which are posted all over the internet. Anyhow, here is an interesting story where an Indonesian Cleric officially declares that taking a selfie is a sin and check out how Muslim youth responded in defiance. Here’s an interesting thought - One could argue that Jesus himself took the first ever selfie in history! And since we are on the subject of social media, did you know that Facebook is starting to block Facebook profiles of priests and other religious that have Fr., Father, Bishop, or any other religious titles in their name?Seriously?!! Read about it here – Facebook makes some interesting points but I just don’t buy it. Two days until Friday and if you are like me trying to figure out what film would be good for the weekly family movie night, you should consider this romantic comedy with heavy Catholic themes: 'Return to Me'. Its not often you see large families in romantic comedies starring some Hollywood heavy hitters. Check out a review and trailer provided by The Crux. For all you art lovers and painting connoisseurs out there, here is an interesting exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington starting on April 12th that encourages viewers, religious and secular, to 'Meet Mary'. Check this out from our friends at the National Catholic Reporter. Now here’s another “feel good” piece of news that shows how Pope Francis really thinks and cares about the welfare of the homeless and downtrodden in his area: The Vatican will start providing a free haircut and shave for the homeless on Mondays. You may recall that last year the Pope had toilets and showers for the homeless installed in a renovated area in the vicinity of St Peter’s Square. You can read about it here. Did any of you catch the Super Bowl over the weekend? Did you see the incredible pro-life video that was aired during the half time show by Pampers? It had nothing to do with the product but it was incredible nonetheless, considering that a 30-second advertisement during this year's game costs a cool $4.5 million. That's an average of $150,000 per second – perhaps more than any pro-life agency could ever afford. Check this out from CNN: Cuba is about to build the first new Catholic church since Castro took power in 1959 and officially turned the country into an atheist state! In the first years of the revolution, thousands of Catholic priests were jailed or forced into exile, and church property, including the Jesuit school that Castro attended, was seized by the Cuban government. Read up on the details here. Finally now, I leave you with this: a video that came across our FB feed recently reminded me of a lesson that we, as Catholics, often tend to forget in our daily lives. How often do we find ourselves reacting EXACTLY like the judges and crowd in this video? The moral of the story: Never judge a book by its cover! That’s it for me folks. I'd love to hear you thoughts and comments on these stories. If you have any interesting stories yourself, please feel free to send them to me! I hope you enjoy these little stories! I certainly have. Till next week! - Noel