Over the exactly 500 years since the birth at Florence of Philip Neri, each age has fashioned a portrait of the saint in colours suggested by its own needs, fashions, tastes. There is an Italian baroque Philip, for example, all miracles and raptures and surprises. The Enlightenment gave us Goethe’s anti-establishment, sceptical Philip, while 19th-century Catholic romanticism proposed a pious “reformer from within” for veneration.

VATICAN CITY - Celebrating Mass with his former doctoral students and a new generation of scholars of his work, retired Pope Benedict XVI focused his homily on the importance of finding "truth, love and goodness" in God.

BENNINGTON, Vt. - Though the budget was clearly lower, the cast definitely had less experience, the costumes were much simpler and the audiences were far smaller, there was something that the production of "The Lion King Jr." at a Catholic school in the Burlington Diocese had in common with the Broadway production of "The Lion king": Enrique Segura.

TORONTO - In 1866, Pope Pius IX appointed the Redemptorists as custodians of the 15th-century icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help with the mission to “make her known throughout the world.”

In today’s dating world, men who want to wait until marriage for sex are unicorns. People say they exist, but no one you know has ever dated one.

Over the years, I’ve been on a lot of dates. There’s been many that went nowhere, and three that turned into somewhat serious relationships. As a practising (if somewhat lapsed) Catholic over the last five years, I had certainly never dated a unicorn.

Fifth Sunday of Easter (Year B) May 3 (Acts 9:26-31; Psalm 22; 1 John 3:18-24; John 15:1-8)

Small wonder that Saul — later Paul — was feared by the Jerusalem community. They wanted nothing to do with him, for he had terrorized the community of believers in Christ relentlessly. By his own admission in his letters, Paul had hunted them down and arrested them, voting in favour of the death penalty at their trials.

Raissa Maritain the philosopher and spiritual writer died some months after suffering a stroke. During those months she lay in a hospital bed, unable to speak. After her death, her husband, the renowned philosopher Jacques Maritain, in preparing her journals for publication, wrote these words:

Eternity has more kinds of rooms than this world does.

This is a thought inside the head of Marilynne Robinson’s fictional character, Lila, in Robinson’s recent novel. Lila has reason to think that way, that is, to think outside the box of conventional religious piety because her story is not one that fits piety of any kind.

VATICAN CITY - To enter Christ's empty tomb like the disciples and see that he has risen, Christians today also must "bend down," Pope Francis said in his Easter message.

Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 22 (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33)

ROME - Lent is a journey of purification and penance, a movement that should bring one tearfully back to the loving arms of the merciful Father, Pope Francis said at an Ash Wednesday Mass that began with a procession on Rome's Aventine Hill.

VATICAN CITY - In a Valentine's Day ceremony to create 20 new cardinals, Pope Francis offered a meditation on Christian love and, especially, what it means for those who guide and minister in the church.

When I was a young girl, my mother taught me to add “x” and “o” — a kiss and a hug — after my signature. So deeply embedded was this English-language tradition that it never crossed her mind that these symbols had anything to do with religion. I never thought about it myself until she passed away a few years ago and I found myself emitting streams of “x’s” and “o’s” like a binary love code in the countless emails that consume much of my daily life.

Baptism of the Lord (Year B) Jan. 11 (Isaiah 55:1-11; Isaiah 12; 1 John 5:1-9; Mark 1:7-11)

God is not like human beings — and we can rejoice in that. In fact, Isaiah went to great lengths to highlight the wide gulf between divine and human reasoning. This is certainly evident in the fact that God offers food and drink in abundance to all those who hunger and thirst absolutely free and without any preconditions.

DUBUQUE, Iowa - Nicole Hockley's message from Newtown, Connecticut, to people at two different venues in the Dubuque area was clear: "Our hearts are broken, but our spirit is not."