Like most other people, I had no idea who Archbishop Bergoglio was. When he stepped out on the balcony to make himself known to the world as Pope Francis, there was scant little I could’ve told anyone about him. It was as if he was a man without a past. An air of mystery surrounded ...read more

In the previous installment of this series on obscure Marian devotions, we met Father Jakob Rem, a German Jesuit who had a hand in the devotion to Mary Untier of Knots. It turns out Fr. Rem had a deep devotion to Mary and wanted to promote devotion to Mary as a way of renewing the ...read more

The month of May is traditionally the month of Mary in the Catholic Church. To celebrate this month we’ll be bringing you a series of posts about obscure Marian devotions. The first devotion we’ll be examining is Our Lady Untier of Knots. The year is 1612, the place is Augsburg, Germany. A nobleman named Wolfgang ...read more

This post was submitted by Warren Schmidt, CSB. As October draws to a close, I offer a few reflections on the association of the month of October with Mary. The historical roots of October as a month of Mary are unclear. Some attribute the association between October and Mary to the devotion to Our Lady ...read more

The rosary is a powerful prayer, and once you start praying you realize the effects it has on your life. But what is the rosary? It is necessary for us Catholics pray it? So the rosary is a form of prayer, and to understand it and to know more about it, Pedro invited Fr. James Phalan ...read more

I have to be honest, I’ve never really had a great devotion to Mary. I didn’t grow up with one, although, as I’ve written before, my parish at home was “Our Lady of Guadalupe.” As a teenager I heard and read a lot about Medjugorje, and while I understood what the Church teaches about apparitions, ...read more