Religion

When I read “The Pitesti Phenomenon”, in my teens, I was bewildered by how cruel human nature can be. It was also then that I realized that being forced to renounce yourself, to bury your values and defining beliefs to become the reflection of a rotten system, to become inhuman is worse than being physically tortured.

If you’ve ever been to a Christian church, there’s a good chance that you’ll have experienced a unique ritual involving bread and grape juice: the Lord’s Supper, or as we’ll refer to it, Communion. Depending on the denomination, your experience may vary wildly. You may be offered a cup that everyone collectively sips out of, accompanied by a piece of bread. Others will...

I still remember it like it was yesterday: the brightness of the sun on my skin, the chill of the water, the crowds of cheering people. We had gathered that Saturday afternoon on the shores of Lake Jindabyne, a half-hour drive from Mount Kosciuszko, Australia’s tallest mountain.

As the crisis caused by the new coronavirus deepened and spread, it was to be expected that the phenomenon would be framed in apocalyptic terms. It is something that tends to occur in such contexts.

John Andrews and his family decided to cross the ocean against the current of that time. Therefore, many forgotten truths were brought to light, many hopes were reborn, and many dreams came true.

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength,” says Corrie ten Boom, thus underlining a truth all Christians burdened by worry should remember.

The idea of hell takes up a dark corner in most of our minds, whether we think about it or not.

Broken blade. Shaking hands. Clouded mind. “I could have killed him.”

Have you ever felt like there was nothing to your story? Like your life wasn’t anything worth sharing? Or like it would set you further apart from others?

I still remember May 21, 2011, like it was yesterday. Thousands of kilometres away in Boulder, USA, an evangelist named Harold Camping, president of the popular ministry Family Radio, was in the news spotlight. He had predicted that on May 21, more than 200 million Christians all around the world would be raptured away to heaven and that five months later, the world would end.

In a society with a pragmatic mindset, any kind of belief is subject only to practical judgments. Effectiveness, usefulness, and utility are the basic criteria by which actions, deeds or beliefs are valued.

Pope Leo XIV, who was born Robert Francis Prevost, was elected the 267th Supreme Pontiff. Born in the south of Chicago in 1955, he is the first North American pope. Despite this, his relationship with US politics is more complex than his biography might suggest.

The question of human suffering concerns atheists and believers alike. For the former, the search for an answer drives them to the heights of despair. For the latter, suffering inevitably poses a dilemma: why is there so much suffering in the world if the God who created it is loving and omnipotent?

The holidays are a time of generosity, when those forgotten by the world meet those who want to forget that sadness exists and, out of the coexistence of the two needs, something good is born.

It is right for you to look for what you are looking for, but it is not where you are looking for. In the land of death, you seek a happy life: it is not there. How can life be happy somewhere where there is no life? (St. Augustine, Confessions)