OSV News

Around 1950, in Zanesville, Ohio, a young Patrick Flood’s Catholic grade school class watched a movie about persecuted Christians in the newly Communist countries of Eastern Europe. One, he remembers, was Cardinal Mindszenty, then the bishop of Esztergom, Hungary, and today a candidate for sainthood.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is used to addressing the country about steps to contain the coronavirus, but in mid-May he spoke directly to graduates of the nation’s 60 Jesuit high schools with words of encouragement and congratulations.

People who cannot get to confession because of the coronavirus lockdown or another serious reason can go to God directly, be specific about their sins, request pardon and experience God’s loving forgiveness, Pope Francis said.

I was video chatting with my childhood friend yesterday. We haven’t talked in almost a year and we were organizing a virtual happy hour with our high school friends. Why hadn’t we thought about doing this before?

The coronavirus pandemic has drawn well-deserved attention to nurses and midwives, who are among “the saints next door,” dedicated to helping people in some of the most joyful or painful moments of their lives, Pope Francis said.

Soviet political prisoners from various backgrounds begged St. John Paul II’s help in secret messages after his 1978 election, according to a former inmate in recollections published for the late pope’s hundredth birthday.