Over five years after Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burned, the faithful will celebrate its reopening as it returns for the second weekend of Advent.

Notre-Dame, and many churches in France, are owned by the state and merely used by the church. That gave the French government, and President Macron, a big voice in the restoration project.

Many Syrians would return voluntarily to their homeland, Father Benedict Kiely believes, “but it’s a question of what they are returning to.”

What separates “Bonhoeffer” from the myriad instructive Holocaust biographies and melodramas is its timing.

Around the affluent world, new hostility, resentment and anxiety has been directed at immigrant populations that are emerging as preferred scapegoats for all manner of political and socio-economic shortcomings.

Pope Francis has condemned surrogacy as a form of “false compassion.” Now, in Italy, engaging in surrogacy in another country, even where it may be legal, will be a criminal offense for Italian citizens.