Catholic Charities Community Services expands re-entry housing program in Northern Arizona

Program helps previously incarcerated integrate into the community Cottonwood, Ariz. - Catholic Charities Community Services recently expanded its re-entry housing program in the Northern...

It started in a shoebox

After several years serving with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in California, Sister Adele O’Sullivan is back full-time at Circle the City,...

Annual Honor Your Mother celebration unites cultures under diocese’s patroness

Kevin Bronson from Topeka, Kan., was attending the last day of a career and technical education conference at the Phoenix Convention Center on Dec....

What really matters for Advent

I am embarrassed to say I approach Christmas with a bit of dread. It is NOT my favorite season. As a mom with kids at home, Christmas means there is so much more to do. Kids are home from school. The schedule is discombobulated. My life seems out of balance. I strive to do more (baking, decorating, shopping, wrapping, entertaining -- oh my) and yet seem to have less time to do it. My son’s words and the orientation of his heart are what I want this year. I want to be excited about Christmas - just because of Jesus.

Answer Advent call for vigilance with charity, confession, pope suggests

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Advent call for "vigilance" does not mean staying awake and watchful out of fear, but rather out of a longing for the coming of the Lord, Pope Francis wrote. Sometimes people think of vigilance "as an attitude motivated by fear of impending doom, as if a meteorite were about to plunge from the sky," he said in the text of his commentary on the Gospel reading for Dec. 3, the first Sunday of Advent.

Pope says he has serious bronchial infection

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- "As you can see, I am alive," Pope Francis told a group of health care managers Nov. 30. At the brief meeting with participants in a seminar on the ethics of health care management, the pope said he was suffering from a "bronchial condition. Thank God it was not pneumonia," but he said it was a very serious bronchial infection. "I no longer have a fever, but I am still on antibiotics and things like that," he told the group.

St. Bernadette launches young adult group with candlelight Mass

Young Catholics gathered at St. Bernadette on Friday, Nov. 17, to launch the parish young adult program. The night began with a candlelight Mass...

Local retreat center Receives grant from The Diane & Bruce Halle Foundation for Mental...

PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. — The Franciscan Renewal Center recently received a generous grant from The Diane & Bruce Halle Foundation to support the Mental...

The Guadalupe Project: South Phoenix trouble spot transformed when former biker bar becomes epicenter...

Armando Ruiz remembers when the sound of gunfire used to shatter the quiet South Phoenix neighborhood he and his family have called home for...

God plants a seed in everyone; help it flourish, pope tells chaplains

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Be courageous in caring for and accompanying others, helping them to dream big, cultivating their unique gifts and flourishing, Pope Francis told university chaplains and pastoral workers. "The work of education is a true mission in which individuals and situations are accepted with all their lights and shadows -- their shadows, too -- with a kind of 'parental' love," the pope said. "This facilitates in a unique way the growth of those seeds that God has sown within each person," he said Nov. 24 in an audience at the Vatican with people taking part in a conference on pastoral care in Catholic universities, sponsored by the Dicastery for Culture and Education.