Blogs

BREAKING CHAINS Twenty-three teenagers at Girlstown in Chalco, Mexico remained. They stood quietly off to the side two weeks ago as more than three thousand classmates boarded the buses and cars that would take them back to their families on mountainside villages, in small towns, and within the tangle of the inner-city Mexican streets. For […]

READING THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS In the many weeks spent researching the life of Venerable Aloysius Schwartz, founder of World Villages for Children and the Sisters of Mary, I had, of course, discovered countless compelling aspects of his personality and priesthood: he had a droll wit, was unbudging on his commitment to prayer, consecrated […]

WHEN A HELLISH SCENE UNFOLDED BEFORE THEM, A TRAIN FULL OF PASSENGERS STOOD STILL Every so often a news story from the culture slips past the inundation of daily news feeds and manages to paralyze us. This particular story, which broke earlier this week in Philadelphia, read like a scene from hell. I am not […]

RESIGNED TO SERVE THE POOR Fr. Al with child wheelchair On a startling autumn morning in 1989, a doctor asked Fr. Aloysius Schwartz (founder of World Villages for Children) to sit down, looked him in the eye, and shared the hard news: the 59-year-old American missionary, in the prime of his astonishing ministry for the […]

“THANK YOU LORD, I NEEDED THAT” On this Feast Day of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, it is good to recall how the Church Doctor and Carmelite nun broke like teams of wild stallions into Venerable Aloysius Schwartz’s (founder of World Villages for Children) soul. In 1945, Al was a precocious 15-year-old, two years […]

“THANK YOU LORD, I NEEDED THAT” On this Feast Day of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, it is good to recall how the Church Doctor and Carmelite nun broke like teams of wild stallions into Venerable Aloysius Schwartz’s (founder of World Villages for Children) soul. In 1945, Al was a precocious 15-year-old, two years […]

ONE OF A KIND CELEBRATION 20,000 children celebrate their birthdays in world’s largest one day celebration of its kind. The event, named ‘Every Child’s Birthday’ will take place Sunday, August 15th across six countries globally, and will mark the birthdays of some of the world’s poorest children; many of whom don’t have the luxury of […]

FELT LIKE FREEDOM The plastic boat felt thin beneath the small boy’s feet. But the waters stirred up from the paddles that splashed onto the 12-year-old’s face and arms felt like freedom. As the boat pushed Edwin and his father over the Rio Grande River and closer to American soil, the long 22-day journey from […]

BARREN IMAGINATION Richard Dawkins, a well-known anti-religious and atheist thinker, has recently set the Catholic twitter-verse ablaze with an un-original, but ripe for reaction observation: For contemporary culture and people like Dawkins, there does not exist space other than the metaphorical and the literal. Everything is either a pretend-example or quantifiable-tangible. The idea of a […]

“Whoever removes the Cross and its interpretation by the New Testament from the center, in order to replace it, for example, with the social commitment of Jesus to the oppressed as the new center, no longer stands in continuity with the apostolic faith.” –Hans Urs von Balthasar UNDERSTANDING THE OPTION OF THE CROSS A TRIP […]

THE WILLING VICTIM: THE PRIEST NAILED TO THE CROSS PRIESTHOOD IN CHRIST In the concluding episode of today’s Lenten Journey, Fr. Dan Leary shares thoughts on the victimhood of Father Al’s priesthood. The centerpiece of one’s priesthood, Fr. Dan shares, is an identification with the crucified Christ. He believes Venerable Aloysius Schwartz began to offer […]