Issuing Patris Corde, (“With a Father’s Heart”), Pope Francis has declared a special year to honor St. Joseph and to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the declaration of Joseph as the patron of the Universal Church.
Tag: virtues
Catholic virtues offer solution for politicians
To the editor:
Thank you for your editorial, “What’s happening to our ‘perfect union’? Many politicians find divisive issues and exploit them.
When private sector workers began to lose their benefits, politicians began to attack the benefits of public sector employees. Their rhetoric fanned envy, often demonizing those who seemed to be better off.
How saintly popes modeled virtue
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On April 27, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (Pope John XXIII) and Karol Jozef Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) were recognized as saints of the Catholic Church, and may God be praised for it!
No one with the slightest amount of historical sensibility would doubt that these men were figures of enormous significance and truly global impact.
But being a world historical personage is not the same as being a saint; otherwise neither Thérèse of Lisieux, nor John Vianney, nor Benedict Joseph Labré would be saints.
What is a saint?
So what is it that made these two men worthy particularly of canonization? Happily, the Church provides rather clear and objective criteria for answering this question. A saint is someone who lived a life of “heroic virtue” on earth and who is now living the fullness of God’s life in heaven.