Ask a Franciscan

All excommunications are meant to be medicinal. They are a kind of shock therapy intended to make sinners aware of the seriousness of their sin and their spiritual condition and call them to conversion.

Books say Nicholas died in 342 A.D., but they don’t say when he became a saint. They also say that, while many miracles were performed, they were not recognized by the Catholic Church and he was dropped from the Roman ...

I am not doing what I should in order to enter the gates of heaven. Could you send me a daily prayer? I need to change my life, but do not know where to begin. 

On Sundays and holy days of obligation, we recite the Nicene Creed. We begin by saying, “We believe in one God….” Although this is the first person plural, this prayer’s Latin text reads “Credo” (“I believe,” first person singular).

Why do Catholics eat fish on Friday? How did this tradition start? I have been told that at one time the Italian fishing industry was in a depression, so the pope made a law mandating eating fish once a week. ...

In the book How the Irish Saved Civilization (Doubleday), Thomas Cahill talks about both green and white martyrdom. According to Cahill, Ireland was unique in that Christianity was introduced there without bloodshed (red martyrdom).