This year marks the five hundredth anniversary of the death of Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio, 1483–1520), the painter who left us a vast legacy of inestimable beauty and grace. This outstanding artist died, “having sunk under continuous acute fever which carried him off in eight days” — as Alfonso Paolucci sadly writes in Rome to Alfonso…
This year — traditionally, he was born on March 15, 270 — marks the 1,750th anniversary of the birth of the bishop of Myra in modern-day Turkey, whose relics have been resting in Bari since 1087, equally venerated for his holiness and his intercession to God both in the Greek and Slavic East and in…
Two hundred and ten years ago, on March 2, 1810, Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci, who would remain in the memory of the Church as the great pope of the “social question,” was born in Carpineto Romano, south of Rome — Leo XIII (1810–1903). The wisdom and foresight of this supreme pontiff was well underlined by Benedict…
Two hundred fifty years ago, on February 26, 1770, “following a gangrene that developed in one foot,” the one who at the end of his career was called the “first violin-player in Europe” and “master of the nations” died in Padua (P. Petrobelli, Giuseppe Tartini — Le fonti biografiche, Universal Edition 1968, p. 13-14): Italian…
If he lived today, would Mozart have composed a cantata like Davide penitente (The Penitent David), K. 469? Performed successfully for the first time on March 13, 1785 in Vienna’s Burgtheater, it was soon forgotten. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was asked by the Vienna Musicians’ Society (Wiener Tonkünstler-Societät), a pension fund founded in 1771 to…
A theological dispute between Catholic and Protestant students in a tavern in Wittenberg? It happens in the second scene of the German opera Doktor Faust by Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924), complex figure of German-Italian musician, pianist, composer, and writer, “the most extraordinary performer that piano literature has had” (G. Cattaneo, Esperienze intellettuali del primo Novecento, Mondadori…
On January 30, with the first assembly in Frankfurt, the “Synodal Path” of the German Catholic Church reform begins — a “journey” without the observance of canonical regulations that a real synod would require. During the next two years, the 230 members, including 69 bishops and 69 lay persons (progressive) of the Central Committee of…
In this Christmas season we are invited to worship the Divine Word, the invisible Second Person of the Holy Trinity, who is made visible. “He has come to lift up all things to himself, to restore unity to creation” (Preface of Christmas II). The idea of “Christ as Jesus of Nazareth, man, not God incarnate”…
In these times of “politically correct” religious and moral bewilderment, in which Christmas carols are purged of Christian references, when they are not replaced with other songs, times in which Nativity scenes are rejected in the name of a misunderstood religious neutrality and a misrepresented secularity, the call, found in the pope’s recent apostolic letter…
“Tota pulchra es, Maria” is the cry of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary — a cry that rises towards the All Beautiful One, in which the splendor of God’s glory shines. They are words of ancient Franciscan origin, which are found even today in the antiphons sung, or read,…
In the United States, the annual Thanksgiving day, celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November to thank God for the fields’ good harvest, is one of the most popular national holidays since 1620, when the “Pilgrim Fathers” landed at Plymouth Rock . As you reflect on this day, “in which it is a must to…
Please help us to meet our expenses by donating today!
