Brazilian Cardinal to Head Clergy CongregationPope Benedict XVI has named Cardinal Claudio Hummes of S o Paulo Brazil a Franciscan to be the new prefect of the Congregation for Clergy The 72-year-old Brazilian-born son of German immigrants Cardinal Hummes will succeed Cardinal Dar o Castrill
Scott Fappiano spent more than 20 years in prison in New York. He was convicted of a brutal crime in 1985the rape of a woman married to a police officer in Brooklyn. His trial was not exactly open and shut. Although the victim identified Fappiano as her attacker by looking at photographs, he was, in
Last spring, when I visited Major Tony De Stefano at Malone House, a guesthouse converted into an inpatient unit at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., Tony had been there for close to a year. He was undergoing treatment for a lung disease contracted in Afghanistan, probably from inhaling fine
Along with the roughly 2,800 American men and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, 26,000 have been injured, some of them permanently disabled. The news media tend to focus on those who have died, but what about the stories of soldiers who have been disabled? The scope of the question was br
In response to an invitation from Fundlatin, a Venezuelan ecumenical human rights organization, I joined a delegation of Catholic, evangelical and Protestant Christians in April 2006 to witness the dramatic changes taking place in several of Venezuela’s poorest barrios. We were an independent
Collette Kayakez sells dried fish in her urban neighborhood in Lubumbashi, the second-largest city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Not long ago, her business was failing. It is hard to keep track of prices and sales if you do not know how to read and write. Ms. Kayakez, her husband, Ibert,
Orrin Hatch, Utah’s Republican senior senator, is a firm opponent of abortion. He is also a firm supporter of research on embryonic stem cells, even though this involves destruction of the embryos. The senator’s reasons for this latter position are mainly two. He believes, as he has said