The crowds shouted “Santo Subito” — Sainthood now! – at his funeral, and now some six years later he’ll be joining the ranks of the saints! This Sunday Pope John Paul II will be declared Blessed. Our coverage for the Beatification Mass begins at 3:30am ET/12:30am PT on May 1st, and includes our production Thank ...read more

Do you have a “JP II moment”? Most of us do. This charismatic man was a fixture in my life. He was all I ever knew as Pope until the ripe old age of 20! To be sure (and later to be reinforced over and over): he shaped my experience of the Church and, in ...read more

I’ve been doing a fair bit of traveling lately and one of the things I like to do while in airports is browse through the magazine and bookstores. I never buy magazines or even look through them much, so this is about the only time that I have a sense of what magazines are publishing. ...read more

Totus Tuus – “totally yours” – the apostolic motto for Pope John II inspired by Mother Mary’s perfect example, is also the title of the concert gala hosted by Catholic Youth Studio on Sunday, May 8th at Roy Thompson Hall. The Mother’s Day gala concert is in honour of Pope John Paul’s May 1st beatification ...read more

Seventy-year-old Fr. Michael Prieur is a professor of Moral and Sacramental Theology at St. Peter’s Seminary in London, Ontario; he is also a bioethics specialist and an author of numerous books.  But there is one topic that has intrigued him so much that he wrote a book about it and shared it with us at ...read more

Do you love the pull of a good mystery, the intrigue of a “who dunnit?” Well, before you pick up that mystery novel, consider for a moment the mysteries that are right in front of us – the mysteries of the Catholic Church and, in particular, the central mystery of the Holy Trinity. Now, there ...read more

Violence in the Middle East, Libya, the Ivory Coast. Destruction in Japan. Persecution of Christians. Amidst all the turmoil it seems hard to find the joy of Easter. But in his Urbi et Orbi message, Pope Benedict XVI says it is for these “painful situations” that Christ died for us. In heaven all is peace ...read more

Christ is Risen, alleluia! Truly, He is Risen, alleluia! Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels! Exult, all creation around God’s throne! Jesus Christ, our King, is risen! Sound the trumpet of salvation! Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor, radiant in the brightness of your King! Christ has conquered! Glory fills you! Darkness vanishes for ...read more

In an Easter Vigil liturgy that included six readings, Pope Benedict chose to focus on the first one. In explaining the selection of the reading from the first chapter of Genesis, the Pope asks, “Is it really important to speak also of creation during the Easter Vigil? Could we not begin with the events in ...read more

Pope Benedict presided over the Way of the Cross at Rome’s Colosseum today. The meditations this year were written by an Augustian nun, Sister Maria Rita Piccione, OSA. She’s the President of the Our Lady of Good Counsel Federation of Augustinian Monasteries in Italy. In the meditation on the fourth station, Jesus meets his Mother, ...read more