O Lord, Thou has made for Thyself a worthy dwelling-place in the Virgin Mary.”

From the Feast of the Expectation of the Virgin Mary, December 18 Read More »

CNA reports: Some 100,000 Catholics gathered in the northern Peruvian city of Otuzco to celebrate the feast day of Our Lady of the Gate on Dec. 15. More on this feast day here.

The Mystery of the Immaculate Conception is not something on the borderlands of the Christian religion; rather, it stands front and center in the true Faith. This is because the Immaculate Herself is so wrapped up in the divine decree for the redemption of men, that her perpetual sinlessness and fulness of grace form a continuum with what the faith teaches about Jesus (Christology) and His Salvation (Soteriology).

Blessed Pius IX expressed this truth in Ineffabilis Deus, the encyclical wherein he defined the dogma: Read More »

Whispers in the Loggia: We might still be a week out from the late-night mañanitas and the annual climax of the Stateside church’s ever-booming Guadalupe festival, but the coast-to-coast celebrations of what’s become American Catholicism’s “Super Bowl” kick into full gear at this hour, in the city founded under the name of Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Ángeles — that is, LA. Read more of this inspiring report here.

In preparation for the great feast day of Our Lady on December 12, CNA has a brief recap here of the Aztec saint’s encounter with “the true Mother of God” on December 9, 1531.

Catholic Culture: Around 5,000 runners are participating in the 10th annual relay from Mexico to New York in honor of the upcoming feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. More here.

John Heschmeyer, of Shameless Popery website, has written an excellent summation of the scriptural proofs that clearly demonstrate that our Savior was the only-Begotten Son of Mary and that the disciples who are referred to as “his brethren” are His cousins. Read More »

AsiaNews: Not even in the Soviet times could the mummified corpse of Lenin boast such numbers. Political leaders, aware of the importance of the event, took advantage of the occasion to boost their visibility ahead of the legislative election on December 4. The prime minister and possible future Russian president Vladimir Putin, and the leader of the Communists, Gennady Ziuganov, were just some of the most famous figures who flocked to kiss the relic that here-to-fore had never left Mount Athos, where it is kept. Many others, bypassing the kilometer-long queue, arrived in front of the cathedral with sirens blaring and used preferential queues to the anger of waiting crowds. Read full report here.

Imagine. People had to wait in line in freezing cold for 24 hours.

Yahoo News: Braving freezing cold temperatures and ice-covered sidewalks, tens of thousands of Russians stood in line Wednesday to see and kiss a newly arrived relic of the Virgin Mary in Russia’s largest Orthodox cathedral. Full report is here.

AsiaNews: As the world celebrated the arrival of a new crew on the International Space Station (ISS), during a live TV broadcast of the astronauts speaking about their experiences two images were clearly visible: the first man in space, the Russian Gagarin , and the icon of Our Lady of Kazan. Read more here.