Pope Francis issued a wake-up call in a frank address (or was it a scolding?) he delivered Nov. 25 to the European Parliament. Good for him. But let’s not be smug about it. His knuckle-rap that a “self-absorbed” Europe needs to recover its soul applies with equal weight to North America.

Thomas Andrew Echlin will never know what he started in 1955, when he died at home with his mother just days after he was born.