By Effie CaldarolaThe North Star Catholic Death, especially a sudden death, can demand decisions that come at a most difficult time. Not everyone has made plans. For the Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau, there are resources that can help. The approach of Memorial Day at the end of May is an opportunity to explore avenues available. “We…
Forest Lawn Cemetery in Omaha, Nebraska, sits on 100 acres near the Missouri River, where the dry, monotonous flat terrain of Nebraska begins to give way to the greener hills of Iowa. Established in 1885, the cemetery is a resting place for many prominent Nebraskans. But it’s also the burial site, in pauper’s field, of…
A friend in our group asked if we thought Mary, Jesus’s mother, had been present at the Last Supper. There’s much we don’t know about the Last Supper. We know that many women, including Mary, had followed Jesus into Jerusalem because Scripture records their presence at the Crucifixion. And let’s face it, someone had to…
How’s your Lent going? About this time of the season, we’re either well into a rhythm of observance, or we feel the time slipping by and think we’re not “doing” enough.
My daughter lives in the old Italian neighborhood of South Philadelphia. Like all urban areas, the demographics are changing, but there’s still a vibrant Italian outdoor market and restaurants and delis which sell the best Italian food this side of Rome. She has a friend who works in a bar and restaurant in the area….
In the summer of 2019, Daughter of Charity Sister Mary Peter Diaz left Anchorage for a new assignment on the vast Navajo Reservation in the Southwestern United States. Like all of us, Sister Mary Peter, who had worked here in both Hispanic and Native ministry, had no idea what was in store in 2020. So,…
On a cold November day, I noticed on Twitter Sister Helen Prejean, the Catholic death penalty opponent, announcing that her friend Bill Pelke had died in Anchorage, Alaska, where he had retired. He was shoveling snow when he suffered a heart attack. I had heard Bill speak years before and had tried to schedule a…
It was an April day in 2014, just a few days before Jesuit Father Frans van der Lugt would celebrate his 76th birthday. The gunmen’s knock on the door was abrupt. The beating came first, then two bullets to the head. At least once a year, I like to write something about him. The call…
Matteo Ricci, a 16th-century Jesuit, told the story of two men walking together. One of the men was extremely rich and one was extremely poor.A passerby commented, “Those two men are very close friends,” to which an ancient sage was said to have replied, “If that is true, then why is one of them rich…
CatholicAnchor.org Archbishop Francis T. Hurley of Anchorage had a vision. As the keynote speaker at a Catholic Press Association national conference in 1997, he spoke about how the Catholic press should live out its mission of proclaiming the Church’s social justice message. In the audience that day was a young University of Portland graduate, John…