I’ve got good news and bad news (but mostly bad news) about the future of religion in the United States based on a recent Gallup poll on religious practice. First the good news: 30% of all US adults and 33 […]

This past Sunday, May 5, was the day of the Broad Street Run. It was a rainy gloomy Sunday. Our Sunday Mass attendance was half of what it has been over the past few months. Saint John’s Mass attendance is […]

When I was a boy in a Catholic elementary school, each year each class created a May altar. The statue of Mary was placed on a pedestal and decorated with cloths, flowers and art. I remember looking at each class’s […]

Hanging above my desk in my office is a print of the home of Saint Catherine of Siena. The picture depicts the way the home looks today. A few years ago, I was in Rome for a meeting and I […]

Father Roch Raible, OFM Cap was my high school earth science and biology teacher. Father Roch loved nature. He was one of the foremost experts on the ecology of Western Pennsylvania and was consulted as an expert by universities and […]

When I moved to Saint John’s Church in 1991 from Cleveland, I was astonished to see that Center City was a vibrant downtown–attractive to businesses, residents, students, shoppers and tourists. I was familiar with downtown Pittsburgh and Cleveland; but I […]

  I have been associated with Saint John Church since 1991, though for most of that time I was a resident in the friary with work elsewhere. I don’t remember in those years a time when a bishop came to […]