My big fat Spanish wedding Skip to content Last week, at a parish just a few miles north of Madrid, 18 couples celebrated the first ‘macro-wedding’ in Spain. The macro-wedding at San Sebastián Mártir Parish. Credit: Archdiocese of Madrid Subscribe now The couples, who had all been cohabiting for at least five years, entered into the relationship of marriage on August 29, after months of preparation at San Sebastián Mártir Parish. Spain is known as one of the most traditionally Catholic countries in the world. However, only 20% of weddings in the country take place according to canonical form, which is required by the Church for Catholics to validly contract marriage. The parish priest, Fr. Javier Sánchez-Cervera, had noticed that most of the couples coming to his parish to baptize their ch...

The mission and work of Mother Teresa can be seen in her profound Eucharistic life. As the 10th National Eucharistic Congress concluded recently in Indianapolis, with prayers for a new Pentecost in the U.S. Church, it’s a good time to look back at Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her participation in the 41st International Congress in Philadelphia in 1976. What was her understanding of the unitive and transformative meaning of the Eucharist? In a letter dated April 30, 1975, a year before the start of the event, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal John Krol, invited Mother Teresa to be his guest “and play a featured role in one of the Congress programs dealing with the Eucharist and the hunger of people for food and the necessities of life.” Mother Teresa’s response arrived promptly, in ...

JAKARTA – The Indonesian police have detained seven people in a failed plot to attack Pope Francis, who wrapped up the first leg of his 12-day Asia-Pacific tour in the archipelago on Sept 6. A total of seven people were detained, mostly on Sept 2 and 3, in Jakarta, in the outlying cities of Bogor and Bekasi, West Sumatra province and Bangka Belitung Islands province, according to the media statement issued on Sept 6 by Indonesia’s national police anti-terrorism squad Detachment-88. The initials of the arrested are HFP, LB, DF, FA, HS, ER and RS, the statement said.   Detachment-88 spokesman Aswin Siregar told reporters that investigations are still ongoing, and it has not yet been established whether the seven detainees know each other, or are members of the same terror cell. “We have...

Lay witness has a huge impact, but priests have to be there to provide the sacraments. That’s one important lesson from the readings this Sunday, the Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B. The story told by Mark in the Gospel shows exactly how this works. First, even Jesus’s travel route is important in this Sunday’s Gospel. The passage begins by saying, “Jesus left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee.” If you look at a map of the territory, you will see that this is like saying, “Jesus left New York, and went to Washington, D.C., by way of Boston.” This is a telling detail about Jesus’s modus operandi. He often doesn’t take the most efficient way; he takes the most efficacious way. The most efficient way to save the world might have been to appear in...