via United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is starving, torturing, and killing its people. The Syrian government has “disappeared” more than 100,000 civilians into a secret network of prisons. One of the disappeared was Mansour Omari. Mansour and other detainees mixed rust with their own blood to create ink, and used… Read More Syria: These Names, Written in Blood, Must Not Be Forgotten

A people that does not take care of grandparents, that does not treat them well has no future! The elderly have wisdom. They are entrusted with a great responsibility: to transmit their life experience, their family history, the history of a community, of a people. Let us keep in mind our elders, so that sustained… Read More Pope Francis’ Prayer Intentions for December 2017: For the Elderly

Millennial writer Nichole Flores writes: As I was growing up in a Mexican-American family, Guadalupe was everywhere, but most notably in the face of my grandmother, María Guadalupe García Flores. A humble woman without much formal education, her faith guided her as she raised 12 children amid immense poverty in rural Nebraska. My grandmother embodied… Read More Guadalupe’s Legacy, Meaning, and Influence Today

via Washington Post: President Trump on Wednesday shared three inflammatory anti-Muslim videos on Twitter posted by a far-right British activist, drawing backlash from across Britain, including a sharp rebuke from the British prime minister’s office. The videos — whose authenticity could not be independently verified — were first shared by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader… Read More Another Display of Trump’s Anti-Muslim Bigotry and Comfort with Fascism

via Vatican Radio: Pope Francis on Sunday greeted pilgrims from around the world who were gathered in Saint Peter’s Square for the weekly Angelus. The Holy Father had particular greetings for members of the Ukrainian community who are commemorating “the tragedy of the Holodomor, the death by starvation provoked by the Stalinist regime with millions… Read More Pope Francis Notes Stalin’s Genocidal Starvation of Ukrainians

Here are some highlights from Cardinal Blase Cupich’s address, “A Consistent Ethic of Solidarity: Transcending Self, Transforming the World,” at the Capstone Conference for the project Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life: The ultimate measure of one’s virtue is not only how one personally improves, but how the common good is fostered and furthered… Read More Cardinal Cupich on Virtue, Solidarity, and the Common Good

Millennial writer Elizabeth Bruenig writes: After the mass shooting before last, conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly articulated what anti-gun-control politics seem to presume but rarely admit: that blood is the cost of the right to bear arms. “This is the price of freedom,” O’Reilly wrote on his blog, referring to the dozens killed in Las Vegas.… Read More Our Broken Understanding of Freedom Fuels Gun Violence