As a child, Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli was moved when an uncle told him of a missionary who been crucified. He said that he wanted to be a martyr but "without the nails."

The next time you are watching your kids play soccer, I would like you to think about some other kids, halfway around the world, and their soccer balls. Because unlike your children, for whom the ball is a symbol of childhood, for children in India the ball is often a symbol of stolen childhood.

Governor James Michael Curley wanted a lottery. It was the spring of 1935, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was facing a budget crunch, and Curley saw the lottery as a painless alternative to tax hikes.

"Do you want Christ or your life?" the mob leaders demanded of the Nayaks and five other members of the Nayak family. Unfazed, the brothers replied, "Christ is everything for us."

The persecution of Christians in India.

Last Friday, Sept. 5, was the anniversary of Mother Teresa's death. Eleven years ago, Indians lined the streets to honour her state funeral procession. This year, her sisters, the Missionaries of Charity, encountered a rather different crowd on the anniversary.

The world justly celebrates the life of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a great man whose work and witness seems most aptly summed up in a single word: prophetic. But, as prophets are in a habit of doing, he made some people feel the needle who were sure they didnt deserve it.

"It is finished," professor P.Z. Myers wrote on his popular science blog.

Vindication is rarely so complete in a single lifetime, even one nearly 90 years long.

Russia today called to mind the events of July 17, 1918 -- 90 years ago -- when the last Russian czar, Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their children were executed.