News - October 2011 RSS Feed

Ordained in mid-life in 1994, Fr. Gordon Kalil’s journey to the priesthood took an unlikely trajectory. After serving nearly five years in the Air Force, working in microbiology and assisting in autopsies on servicemen returning from Vietnam, he had a meteoric rise in the fashion industry.

We often wonder whether symptoms will go away on their own or whether they should be attended to immediately. Here are some symptoms that require medical attention, some more urgently than others.

As Catholics we all know that we’re called to “spread the faith” — to evangelize. We’ve all heard Blessed John Paul’s call for the New Evangelization. And as Legates, our very mission statement is to study, live and spread the faith.

This highly acclaimed French film tells the true story of an Algerian monastery where nine Trappist monks lived in harmony with the largely Muslim population, until seven of them were kidnapped and assassinated in 1996 during the Algerian Civil War.

Here’s a rare feel good sports film based on the incredible true story of the 1971-72 Immaculata College team that started in obscurity but became the original Cinderella story in women’s basketball.

The Way is a powerful and moving story of an American doctor who loses his son in a tragic accident along the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage route known as the Way of St. James. Tom Avery (Sheen) intends to retrieve his son’s body and return home.

If you’ve ever tuned in to the Catholic Channel on Sirius/XM, you’ve probably stumbled upon The Catholic Guy, Rulli’s always witty program. In this equally clever collection of stories from his own life, the Emmy Award-winning journalist shares the joys and struggles of trying to follow God in the midst of his own fast-paced life.

The Catholic Church must embrace new media in the same way it embraced print, radio and television. Vogt, a 25-year-old blogger and mechanical engineer, contends that if the Church wants to connect with her flock, she must engage the digital revolution.

From the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster to Hurricane Katrina, Jindal has shown an astounding ability to get things done. The son of Indian immigrants, this Catholic convert from Hinduism presided over Louisiana’s health-care system at age 24, headed the University of Louisiana system at 27, became a U.S. congressman at 33, and was elected governor of Louisiana at 36.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the United States, aside from non-melanoma skin cancer. In 2007, the most recent year numbers are available, 202,964 American women were diagnosed with breast cancer — and 40,598 women died from it.

The upcoming annual Summit — only four months away — will mark Legatus’ 25th anniversary, and the response to this milestone event has been enthusiastic. Legates have already begun reserving their rooms at the Ritz-Carlton Beach Resort in Naples, Fla. Because a capacity crowd is anticipated, event organizers suggest booking a room as early as possible for the Feb. 2-4 event.

A recent news report chronicled a Chinese woman named Huang Yijun. Sixty years ago, her unborn child died, but the infant was never expelled from her body. Instead, her baby’s body slowly began to calcify inside her, becoming a crystallized, stone-like mass. Such stone babies (known as lithopedions) are extremely rare. When Huang was 92 years old, the baby was discovered in her abdomen and surgically removed.

There is great enthusiasm for entrepreneurship these days. There are social entrepreneurs, intellectual entrepreneurs, educational entrepreneurs and even intra-preneurs (entrepreneurs within their own companies).

Since the time of Pope Pius XII (1939-1957), the Church has explicitly taught that both inter vivos and postmortem (cadaver) transplants are licit, based upon the principle of fraternal charity, but only when certain requirements are met.

Pope Benedict XVI beatified Chiara “Luce” Badano on Sept. 25, 2010, just 20 years after her death. That should not surprise us, for she modeled a joyful, down-to-earth holiness much like that of Blessed Pier-Giorgio Frassati, another young saint.

I’ll never forget a couple of years ago standing at the spot where Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River. I was there for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Jordan, and the group of journalists I was traveling with arrived a few hours ahead of the Pope.

Ordained in mid-life in 1994, Fr. Gordon Kalil’s journey to the priesthood took an unlikely trajectory. After serving nearly five years in the Air Force, working in microbiology and assisting in autopsies on servicemen returning from Vietnam, he had a meteoric rise in the fashion industry.