Siji Antony was initially thrilled when, after many hurdles, she received her visa for a medical nurse's job in Saudi Arabia in 2013. A handsome salary and the lure of a big city added to the excitement. But her joy was short-lived.

The restrictions on the practices of her Catholic faith in the kingdom was a major cause for concern. In her home state of Kerala in southern India, she attended Mass daily. "The prospect of living without Sunday Mass was horrifying for me," she said.

On Wednesday’s Audience (June 28): Martyrdom is not “the supreme ideal of Christian life, for there is charity above it,” but a witness and a lifestyle that “is part” of the Gospel.

Like any married couple still in love after 54 years, Larry and Marilyn Suchy cast a warm glow when they are together. Their story, however, is not one of complete marital bliss, but one that shows how dramatically God’s grace can heal. It can even take a divorced couple with one spouse having served time in federal prison and renew their marriage. In that way, they are a model couple—models of faith, forgiveness, hope, and love.

One evening, around their kitchen table in Bismarck, North Dakota, Larry and Marilyn shared their story.

I just got back from a five-day retreat with my community of the Schoenstatt Movement.

It was wonderful.

It is a very uncertain world we are living in. We do not know what is right and what is wrong. We stand at the crossroads of life not knowing which way to take. This uncertainty is very unnerving for the modern man whose one concern is to make life more secure. In the midst of this uncertainty Jesus declares "I am the Way."

This year on June 23, the Catholic Church celebrated the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. But where did that tradition originate?

Devotion to the wounded heart of Jesus has its origins in the eleventh century, when pious Christians meditated on the Five Wounds of Christ. There grew up among the faithful prayers to the Sacred Heart, prayers to the Shoulder Wound of Christ—private devotions which helped Christians to focus on the passion and death of Christ, and thus to grow in love for our Savior who had suffered and died for us.

Ordinarily the Church observes the day of a saint's death as his feast, because that day marks his entrance into heaven. To this rule there are two notable exceptions, the birthdays of the Blessed Virgin and of Saint John the Baptist.

On June 21, 2017 Pope Francis appointed German Joachim von Braun, 66, President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Expert in food security, he is Professor of Economics and Technological Innovation and Director of the Research Center for Development, of the University of Bonn, Germany.

“Fear no one,” says Jesus in today’s Gospel.

He doesn’t want us to be secret Christians, hiding our faith from the world, embarrassed that we still believe. He says, “Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father, and whoever denies me before others I will deny before my heavenly Father.”

He wants us to “proclaim on the housetops” what he has revealed. But we fail at this so often that it can be a little discouraging.

Francis to ROACO: “If Eastern faithful are forced to emigrate,” they must be able to continue to live “according to their own ecclesial tradition”.