U.S. bishops plan to launch a postcard campaign in 2010 to urge Congress to make comprehensive immigration reform its next legislative priority. •Advent services at St. Cecilia Parish in Detroit, Mich., will include “Thug Sundays,” a gun buy-back and outreach program targeting Detroit’s gang members. • President Barack Obama has established a new Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues and named Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, and James W. Wagner, president of Emory University in Atlanta, to be its top officials. • Suggestions for daily prayer, reading, reflection and action throughout the Advent and Christmas seasons can be found at www.usccb.org/advent. • After resisting their release all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Diocese of Bridgeport on Dec. 1 delivered thousands of pages of court documents related to sexual abuse by clergy to the attorneys for the four newspapers that had sued to obtain the material. • The Israeli Supreme Court is reviewing the case of 21-year-old Berlanty Azzam, a Bethlehem University student deported from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, and a decision is expected in mid-December.
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Pope Francis prayed that the Jubilee Year may become “a season of hope” and reconciliation in a world at war and suffering humanitarian crises as he opened the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve.
‘If God can visit us, even when our hearts seem like a lowly manger, we can truly say: Hope is not dead; hope is alive and it embraces our lives forever!’
Inspired by his friend and mentor Henri Nouwen, Metropolitan Borys Gudziak, leader of Ukrainian Catholics in the U.S., invites listeners in his Christmas Eve homily to approach the manger with renewed awe and openness.
A Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, by Father Terrance Klein