For 30 years as our most popular former president, Carter has functioned as the nation’s conscience, mainly because, like Pope Francis, he’s the real deal: a leader who says what he does and does what he says.

On my desk at America Media headquarters sits a sealed glass bowl containing some dark, hardened soil from the tract of land my family tilled for more than two centuries in County Galway, Ireland. This is unsurprising, I suppose. When I try to count back through my 13 predecessors as editor in chief

Statements that refer to “the bishops” often belie a diverse and complex reality.

“What is Pope Francis really doing?” might be the wrong question.

How we understand ourselves as a church guides how we should be in the world.

Robert Kennedy and the truly radical nature of our Christian call in the modern world.