BLOG: Mary Rose Bacani Valenti
The last Monday of August is always the day that the Philippines celebrates its national heroes. This day falls on August 24th of this year and so I started reflecting on the national heroes I remember. My mind went to the national saint in my history books in the Philippines — Lorenzo Ruiz. I looked ...read more
As you may know, fellow Salt + Light producer, Kris Dmytrenko, and I went to World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney, Australia. Right after World Youth Day, we stayed a few days longer, this time in the southern part of Australia – South Australia! We were kindly hosted by the Archdiocese of Adelaide. Our mission: ...read more
A lot of you may have seen this on YouTube already, because it’s gotten quite popular. It’s called JK Wedding Entrance Dance. The wedding is in a church at St. Paul, Minnesota, and the whole wedding party dances to Chris Brown’s song “Forever” as they walk down the aisle towards the altar. This has gotten ...read more
Among the key patron saints of World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney, Blessed Mary MacKillop stands out as being the only native-born Australian. During her beatification in 1995, Pope John Paul II said that Mary MacKillop embodies the best of Australia and its people: “genuine openness to others, hospitality to strangers, generosity to the needy, ...read more
Once in a while, in the busyness of daily life, I find that something pulls me to stop for a bit and take a drink. I take a drink whenever I come across anything like an imaginative story, a laughing innocent child, or a spiritually uplifting poem. In this case, I’d like to share an ...read more
Almost four years ago, in December of 2005, I was filming a documentary in a place I’d never heard of — Antigonish. It’s a small town in northeastern Nova Scotia that may not be known to a lot of Canadians. But if you go up to somebody in Africa or South America and mention you’re ...read more
Since it is World Youth Day month, I’d like to share a little something about my first World Youth Day experience, which was last year in Australia! In particular, I’d like to talk about one of the patron saints of WYD 2008 — Mary MacKillop, Australia’s first saint (well, technically she’s Blessed Mary MacKillop, a ...read more
July is World Youth Day month! I wasn’t in Toronto for World Youth Day 2002, but I still see three things around the city that are “remains” of those glorious days: first, I work at Salt + Light Television, the station that was born “on the wings of WYD 2002” and where the WYD spirit ...read more
It’s rare that I talk about movies. The last one was Slumdog Millionaire, and this time it’s the Pixar computer-animated comedy-adventure movie distributed by Disney — Up. All I knew of the movie before seeing it was that a cranky old man lifts his house up with balloons and is accompanied on his airborne journey ...read more
This week I fell in love with another cat (other than my own cat at home) from the Diocese of London, Ontario. This cat lives at Holy Family Retreat House, which is located in a little hamlet called Oxley, 47 kilometres south of Windsor by Lake Erie. He definitely enjoys cottage country, complete with birds, ...read more