Only one more day to tell us what’s on your heart!   The Disciple Maker Index survey will only be open until tomorrow, March 23 rd . To gain meaningful insights for our parish, we need at least 49% participation . If you...

President Donald Trump says the US will "obliterate" Iranian power plants if the Strait of Hormuz is not open before a 48-hour deadline.

Read all

 

In a message read during the funeral ceremony of the Catholicos-Patriarch of Georgia, Pope Leo XIV describes him as the 'voice of reconciliation' and 'tireless builder of unity.' He also recalls his passion for music, 'an inspiration for the search for beauty' that unites the Churches.

Read all

 

After praying the Angelus, Pope Leo calls for an end to violence around the world, urging everyone to persevere in prayer because “we cannot remain silent in the face of the suffering of so many people, innocent victims of these conflicts.”

Read all

 

At the Sunday Angelus, Pope Leo XIV reflects on the Gospel account of the resurrection of Lazarus, and how it invites us to the fullness of life and to be renewed by God's grace to walk in the light of love, reflecting His boundless charity.

Read all

 

Pope Leo writes a letter to Popotus, an Italian weekly supplement dedicated to children that is celebrating its 30th anniversary, and invites everyone to keep a “childlike outlook on reality” in order to “remain human."

Read all

 

Sunday, March 22, 2026 | Fifth Sunday of Lent |  John 11:1–45 (or 11:3–7, 17, 20–27, 33b–45) Friends, today’s Gospel speaks of Jesus’ conquest of death in the raising of Lazarus. What if death is not at all what God...

In the midst of the violence in the Middle East, the Custody of the Holy Land invites people around the world to spiritually join in the prayers "so that war and violence may cease, and that the paths of dialogue, diplomacy, and politics...may be walked with courage and responsibility."

Read all

 

The United Nations' nuclear watchdog has urged military restraint to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident after Iran said the Natanz nuclear facility was targeted by strikes.

Read all

 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Once a young teenager wearing a cap and gown for his eighth-grade graduation photo in Chicago, today the famous former-student posed for a reunion picture wearing his papal zucchetto and cassock at the Vatican.

Pope Leo XIV, who graduated from the lower school of St. Mary of the Assumption on the city's South Side in 1969, greeted and reminisced with 10 of his 82 former classmates after the general audience in St. Peter's Square March 18.

"Sorry! I'm nervous," laughed Sherry Stone (née Blue) after a small sign saying, "God bless you Pope Leo," slipped from her grasp when she reached out to shake the hand of her former classmate -- Robert F. Prevost.

The pope proudly held up their old graduation photo as they posed for another photo together, almost 60 years later.

"Here he is, our friend, the pope," Jerome Clemens told the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, pointing to the black-and-white image of the 13-year-old Prevost. Clemens then showed the back of the class photo with Prevost's old autograph and his new one that was signed, "Leo XIV." 

Among the small gifts they brought was the 2025 fall issue of "Air Chicago," a color magazine produced for passengers coming through Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports, whose cover story was the election of a pope from Chicago.

The group came to Rome and the general audience to show their camaraderie and embrace once again their former classmate -- now the 266th successor of St. Peter, the newspaper reported.

John Riggio told the newspaper about the close-knit atmosphere at the school, saying it was more like a family.

In fact, the pope's mother, Mildred Agnes Prevost, worked there as a librarian and was also actively involved with the school and parish, Stone said. 

She told The Lansing Journal last May, right after her classmate's election by the College of Cardinals, that she had remembered him making a comment when they were young, "that he wanted to grow up to be pope."

"When he was in the conclave, I thought, 'Could it be him? Could Bob be the new pope? No, probably not,'" Stone had told the Journal. "When I saw that it was him, I was just amazed. I was crying tears of joy."

She had said he was kind, humble and well-liked by his classmates. "He was a super nice guy, but not nerdy."

Following his middle school graduation, Prevost went on to attend the Augustinians' St. Augustine Seminary High School near Saugatuck, Michigan, where he graduated in 1973, followed by enrolling in Villanova University, an Augustinian college located near Philadelphia, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics in 1977.