ByFons In mid-April, a biologist filmed a heartwarming video of a jellyfish gliding through clean waterways with reflections of the grand places of Venice, the Italian city that used to be one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world before the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Venice has been deserted since pandemic-stricken Italy went into lockdown…
ByFons One afternoon, I decided to reread Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, one of my favorite novels. Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book, the first in what has now become a trilogy (and soon to be a quartet), was published in 2004. For myself and many others who read Gilead soon after it arrived, it was a revelation, a religious novel both deeply thoughtful and…
ByFons Raul Luis Lopez is No. 33 on a list that keeps growing. The 39-year-old restaurant deliveryman died last month in a New York hospital. And at Saint Peter’s Church in Manhattan, he’s part of a devastating tally: Coronavirus Deaths from Our Parish. The list sits on the Rev. Fabian Arias’ desk, beneath the N95 mask…
ByFons For more than two months we have been consumed by daily death counts and the latest news from Italy, Spain, France and the US. We are aware that China claims to have almost stamped out domestic transmission. The more well-read can talk about contact tracing in South Korea and Taiwan, and the possibility that Australia…
ByFons The pandemic is a widespread and shared illness. It is a common experience of incredible and unexpected fragility. It puts into question many aspects of our lives and of our world that we had taken for granted. This causes great suffering and upheaval. But is it only an evil or is it also an opportunity?…
ByFons In a world where everything seemed to be within the grasp of our own human capabilities, developments and intelligence, with our technology that supports increasingly individualistic and alienating ways of life. In dominant societies that function under the premises of quasi-autonomy, self-determination and nationalisms. There, where apparently everything was under our control and superficial relations…
ByFons The new Pope Video has just been published, to make known the prayer intention that the Holy Father has entrusted to the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network. This month, it is about deacons, “the guardians of service in the Church” and of a renewed apostolate in today’s world. Pope Francis exhorts us to pray for them,…
ByFons We, the Bishops of the Amazon, in the face of the uncontrolled advance of COVID-19 across Brazil, especially in the Amazon, express our immense concern and demand greater attention from the federal and state governments to this disease that is increasingly spreading throughout the region. The peoples of the Amazon demand special attention from the…
ByFons ‘Well, if God cannot create a material world with us in it, without suffering and death, then why create at all?’ It is essentially the same dilemma facing any young couple as they ponder bringing new life into the world. They know their offspring will experience highs and lows, and they will, like all of…
ByFons This year was supposed to be a year of celebration in Rome, commemorating five years since the release of Laudato si’, the papal encyclical on care for our common home. However, instead of the gratitude that ought to have characterised the marking of that anniversary, the underlying public sentiment when witnessing the unfolding events first in…
ByFons Today is known as Good Shepherd Sunday, for the Gospel is always taken from St John, where Jesus speaks of himself as the ‘Good Shepherd’. A shepherd leads his flock and Jesus is the shepherd who leads his followers. The sheep know his voice, trust him, and will follow only him. In the same way,…
ByFons In these last few days, we have been facing a situation that, for most of us, is new and involves a major change to our routine, work, schedule, tasks, activity and mission focus. We must adapt to a reality that has been imposed on us in a relatively unexpected way which is not easy to…
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