Though he was a familiar Church leader for many years before becoming pope, there has been little awareness of the spiritual side of Benedict XVI. Now for the first time readers are given a brilliant overview of the Popes most inspirational teachings in Let Gods Light Shine Forth.
My name is Doyle. I hang off a tree with Devines, Foleys, Coffeys, Sullivans. I can sing and play 132 Irish songs. You might think me Irish.
There was an empty seat at this years MTV Music Video Awards. The late Johnny Cash wasnt there.
The blend of youth, athleticism, excellence and Turin fuelled the remarkable life Pier Giorgio Frassati. He died in 1925, but would have been right at home with today's Olympians in the streets of his hometown and in the mountains which he loved.
It was a room full of religious believers Republicans and Democrats who were used to praying together and even hearing guest speakers quote the scriptures. Bono looked around, studying the faces through his blue rock-star sunglasses.
His parents names were Joseph and Mary (which provoked innumerable jokes in his later life), and he was their third child, following his sister, Maria, born in 1921, and his brother, Georg, born in 1924.
The last time I saw Wellington Mara (1916-2005) dancing was at my birthday party. He and Ann, married more than 50 years, allowed that we had been good friends for more than 20 years because I held professional football in contempt and never asked them for tickets.
Pope Benedict XVI has celebrated his first Christmas as bishop of Rome, giving his blessing "to the city and the world." His retired brother, a priest and distinguished choir director, came to stay with him; perhaps the Ratzinger brothers played Mozart duets on the Steinway that the piano company recently donated to the papal apartment.
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick" (Proverbs 13:12), and as I write I hear the angry voices drifting in from the television in the next room. There are sick hearts tonight in Upshur County, West Virginia.
St. Peter was very alive in the serene cardinal who had been bound in his old age and taken where he would not.
