I will be speaking at St. Gabriel Catholic Church in Charlotte on Wednesday night, November 12, at 6:30 p.m. The church is at 3016 Providence Road. Details are here. My topic? My cousin the saint, and how he came to be canonized.
Update:My sincere thanks to Susan Krasniewski and Father Frank at St. Gabriel for hosting me tonight. They both did a sensational job of organizing and promoting my talk and we certainly had a wonderful turnout. It was great to meet so many people afterwards. A special thanks to the Italian-American woman who traveled to Charlotte from Shelby who bought eight books and gave me to two delicious homemade meatball sandwiches!
Writing in Forbes.com, columnist Melik Kaylan evaluates the long-held criticism of Pope Pius XII as doing too little to speak out against Nazi atrocities and (as I concluded through my own research) found it lacking. The WWII pope’s journey to canonization continues at the Vatican. Kaylan’s compelling commentary is here.
Excerpt: “In truth, Hitler hated Pius and Pius deplored both National Socialism and Communism, as countless extant documents show. He struggled against both incessantly, but the Soviets outlasted him, and their revenge has endured even in the West, giving rise to a dubious branch of Holocaust studies devoted entirely to blackening Pius’ reputation. It’s worth citing a few incontestable instances of Pius’ interventions on behalf of Jewish lives:
1. The issuing of 1,600 visas per year from 1939 to 1945 for Jews to escape from Europe to the Dominican Republic. 2. Out of some 8,000 Roman Jews, some 7,000 survived by taking refuge in Vatican buildings. 3. In Hungary, the Church gave an estimated 80,000 certificates to Jews showing they were baptized Catholics to exempt them from harm. 4. The church helped countless thousands to escape to Romania; some 360,000 Jews would leave for Israel from Romania up to the year 1965.”
(Reuters) - A film about a Roman Catholic nun who was declared India’s first woman saint, opens in cinemas in November across India, just weeks after the Pope canonized her in a special ceremony at the Vatican. The story is here.
Three years years, I was fortunate to have a commentary aired on National Public Radio. The 3-minute audio essay is here. It aired just three days before the canonization of Padre Gaetano Catanoso. As luck would have it, a literary agent in California was listening, and before too long, I was at work on a book. A miracle? My mother has always thought so!
As part of this virtual book I’ve been on the last couple of weeks, I have a guest post at the blog Catholic Dads. The link is here. I appreciate the invitation!
From today’s Wall Street Journal, the always thoughtful and provocative Father James Martin weighs in on the lives of two potential saints, the newly beatified parents of the popular St. Therese of Lisieux. Saints were were married is a rarity; saints who were married couples rarer still. Martin offers compelling insight into why such people are as worthy as emulations as virtuous priests and nuns. The story is here.
Excerpt: Certainly there have been as many saintly wives and husbands as there have been holy priests and nuns. But religious orders and dioceses know how to navigate the canonization procedures on behalf of bishops, priests, brothers and sisters. By contrast, how many families have the resources to embark on the decades-long process on behalf of even the holiest mother or father? As a result, married Catholics have few exemplars other than Mary and Joseph, whose situation was hardly replicable.
Julie Davis, who skillfully and lovingly manages the blog Happy Catholic, reviews My Cousin the Saint today. The review is here. It’s also here at Catholic Media Review and here at Catholic Online. Julie has generously invited me to contribute a guest post to her blog next week. Here’s an excerpt from her online review:
“In some ways, Catanoso’s story is the dream of every American whose family lost their roots when they came to this country. He receives an email one day from a woman who wonders if they might be related. It turns out that the American branch of the family has long been missing a deep heritage rooted in the Italian countryside. As well, Catanoso discovers that his grandfather’s cousin, Padre Gaetano Catanoso, is being considered for canonization. This unbelievable news, prompts a family visit to Italy where they are lovingly embraced by their newly found relatives and where they begin hearing stories about ‘the saint.’ “
The process of making this video came in two parts. First, Micheael Frierson, a film maker at UNC-Greensboro, filmed me doing a stand up in front of the cathedral in Reggio. I had to just about shout over the noise of the traffic rushing by on the street. There’s a short transition related to the canonization and then, presto, there I am in Rome! This segment was shot on the last night of our stay in Italy last March. It was filmed around midnight and St. Peter’s Square was all but deserted. Laurelyn and Martha, Michael’s wife, were holding a light reflector and boom mic. We were all gibby from a late, wine-soaked dinner and tired from a long train ride that day from Reggio to Rome. We must’ve done 50 takes, laughing through most of them. Somehow, Michael found a take that worked well enough to use.
Adam Sobsey, a talented book reviewer for The Independent, an alternative weekly in Raleigh, N.C., reviews My Cousin the Saint in this week’s paper. The review is here. An excerpt:
“Although Catanoso often shows us his skeptical-journalist card (he’s a Pulitzer nominee and the executive editor of the Triad’s Business Journal), the combination of his ardent earnestness and his felicitous discoveries mark him as a man who wants very much to believe—partially for the very reason that he seems to keep finding only good news everywhere he looks. Even when people close to him die, there’s uplift at the end.”
From the Associated Press: VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday gave the Roman Catholic church four new saints, including an Indian woman whose canonization is seen as a morale boost to Christians in India who have suffered Hindu violence. The full story is here.
Oct. 23 will be the third anniversary of Benedict’s first canonization ceremony. Padre Gaetano Catanoso was named a saint on that day.
