Vatican pays tribute to murdered church workers (CNS) In situations of extreme poverty, war or civil tensions, 22 Catholic church workers were murdered in 2021, according to Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. Presenting its annual list of missionaries killed during the year Dec. 30, the news agency explained, “We use the term ‘missionary’ for all the baptized, aware that ‘in virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples…’”
Catholic priest in Nigeria shot dead on Christmas Eve (CNA) Father Luke Mewhenu Adeleke, a priest of the Diocese of Abeokuta, was shot dead Friday while returning home after celebrating Mass. He was shot in his car by unknown gunmen Dec. 24 in the Obafemi Owode Local Government Area, after saying Mass in Ogunmakin, about 50 miles east of Abeokuta, in Nigeria’s Ogun State. Father Adeleke, who was in his late 30s, had been ordained a priest in 2017…
Is this Mt. Sinai’s burning bush? (The New York Times) More than half a century ago, Emmanuel Anati, a young Italian archaeologist, found an extraordinary concentration of thousands of rock carvings and rock circles as he surveyed the plateau of Mount Karkom, about 2,500 feet above sea level. Among the rock drawings are many of ibexes, but also some that have been interpreted as depicting the tablets of the commandments or other references from the Bible. At the base of Mount Karkom, named in Hebrew for a desert crocus, there is evidence that ancient migration trails converged here and that cultic rituals took place in the area. Mr. Anati identified what he thought was a sacrificial altar with the remains of 12 pillars of stone that could conceivably correspond to the one described in Exodus 24 that Moses built, representing the 12 tribes of Israel…
8 New Year’s resolutions inspired by Pope Francis (America) Since the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, Francis has had two refrains: We are all “in the same boat,” and “our post-pandemic world will necessarily be different from what it was before the pandemic.” With that in mind, we mined the pope’s homilies and speeches from the past year for advice for building stronger relationships—with God, with our neighbors and with the earth…
