Today in Saint Peter’s Square we have experienced anew the encounter with Christ. We saw Him primerear right before our eyes through the person and the gaze of Pope Francis, the same gaze that won over Matthew two thousand years ago, but present today!...
Dear Friends, As you all know by now, Pope Francis has granted our request for an audience in Saint Peter’s Square for the tenth anniversary of Fr. Giussani’s death and the sixtieth anniversary of the beginning of our Movement. The gratitude that...
Dear Editor, Pope Francis never ceases to amaze us. Speaking at the December 17th General Audience, he said, “The Incarnation of the Son of God opens a new beginning in the universal history of man and woman [...] within a family, in Nazareth [...], in...
So then, what are we here for? The reason is dual, and the second is the consequence of the first; one could say, immediate or contingent consequence of the first. The first is: we are here to say...We were walking along a road, we heard someone talking,...
Strange attitudes are emerging in certain sectors of the Catholic world. This phenomenon was clearly seen, for example, during the Synod on the Family, not so much in the debate among the Synod Fathers on the “new challenges” confronting family life today...
With its 180 days of classes—and accompanying sports team practices, games, club meetings, rehearsals, concerts, musicals, and hours of homework—school is certainly an ubiquitous part of American life. This year, 55 million students and 3.6 million...
Among the many things that blew us away at this last Rimini Meeting, one image has particularly stayed with us. It was offered to us by Fr. Antonio Spadaro, director of the Italian Catholic magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, in a beautiful meeting dedicated...
It can be a strange period, this time between June and August. These are weeks when, in one way or another, the usual rhythms and habits of life are left behind and everything emerges in an atypical way, different from how we see them the rest of the...
We were not expecting this. It was a pilgrimage, born for the most part as a way to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras and so therefore the theme would center on ecumenism and dialogue with our...
It was a once-in-a-lifetime anomaly. A quirk in the calendar that offered two very different events in the space of a month, yet both were and are destined to take up much space in the newspapers and on TV. One is already quite literally history: it will...
The objection has been more or less the same since the times of Judas and the Apostles: Does Jesus truly respond to the problems that life sets before us? Can He solve the problems and remove the troubles of an ever-more disoriented, uncertain humanity,...
We would never have imagined it, a year ago–not like this. But the tremor, which was triggered by Pope Benedict XVI’s great and prophetic gesture, and which then exploded with the advent of Pope Francis, is truly shaking the Church, down to the heart of...
The tenth anniversary of Facebook should not give us pause–afterall, it is “unconscious habit” by now. But pause we must, stopped in our tracks when the disenfranchised state of not only our youth culture but of all aspects of our fragmented lives shows...
January 21st, in the news: the UN rescinds Iran’s invitation to talks on Syria; the crisis in Sudan escalates around oil; Ukrainian unrest has become violent; a tug-of-war continues in the GOP power grab as tension between parties hunkers down to pounce...
Two thousand years, burned away in a few minutes... This was the impression of many when, on November 24th, before a packed Saint Peter’s Square at the Mass for the close of the Year of Faith, Pope Francis held in his arms the reliquary containing the...
In its way, it will be a party, to be celebrated a month before Christmas. On November 24th, Pope Francis will close the Year of Faith that his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI instituted, and that has accompanied us in these months as we have seen new...
This issue’s editorial is the letter that Fr. Julián Carrón wrote to the CL Fraternity and to all the Movement after being received in a private audience by Pope Francis. Dear friends, On Friday, October 11th, I had the grace of being received in a...
This issue of Traces is going to press while the world discusses the future of Syria. An attack would mean war added to war, death added to death, since violence has been devastating that country for years, noticed more or less distractedly by outsiders,...
What is our task? What are we Christians called to do here in the world? Usually, this is not the kind of question one asks before heading out on vacation. At least, not if the idea of vacation is a total break from our usual life. But the weeks ahead are...
“We cannot become starched Christians, those over-educated Christians who speak of theological matters as they calmly sip their tea. No! We must become courageous Christians and go in search of the people who are the very flesh of Christ, those who are...
This is one of those questions that causes you to start, not in a manner of speaking, but literally, because it shifts you all of a sudden, opening a different horizon in a space that seemed fenced in and closed by other questions. At least, this is what...