On Aug 15 the feast of Mary rsquo s Assumption a homeless Chaucer scholar on antipsychotic drugs has a vision that convinces him that 14-year-old Francesca Dunn is the Virgin pregnant with the Savior Certain he rsquo s been elected to serve and protect her Chester finds the girl at a Colorado

You rsquo ll need an iron stomach and a leather bottom to get through these two investigative reports but if you want to know about sexual abuse in the church they are indispensable You will also have to put up with cute titles and chapter heads as well as an occasionally questionable judgment

El Salvador rsquo s civil war took 175 000 lives and during the dozen years of its duration human rights abuses ran rampant Those who denounced the abuses mdash like Archbishop Oscar Romero the six Jesuits at the University of El Salvador and other activists mdash were targeted for assassination

The most dramatic event of the 21st century thus far has been the destruction of the twin towers at the World Trade Center for many the symbol of the capitalist Christian or post-Christian West in New York City on Sept 11 2001 This act was perpetrated by men who identified themselves as Muslim

Recently I received an e-mail from a Jesuit newly arrived in El Salvador to do some pastoral work He remarked on how his eyes had been opened by the reactions of ordinary Salvadorans to Gospel stories He wrote I rsquo m struck by how differently they hear the Scriptures as a result of having been

How could the world get along without nostalgia Well until 1688 it had to do without that word because it hadn rsquo t been invented until the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer simply translated the humble German Heimweh ldquo homesickness rdquo or literally ldquo home-pain rdquo into Greek