All posts tagged: Holy

Catholic bishops’ conference president calls for Holy Hour after Minneapolis DHS killings Bishops call for ‘holy hour’ after DHS killings

Catholic bishops’ conference president calls for Holy Hour after Minneapolis DHS killings Bishops call for ‘holy hour’ after DHS killings

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called for bishops and priests in Catholic churches across the country to hold a Holy Hour of prayer for peace as killings by federal agents have caused national concern about the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort.  Elected to lead the bishops’ conference in November, Coakley made his most robust remarks thus far on the impact of the administration’s agenda in the Wednesday (Jan. 28) statement, signaling growing discomfort among Catholic leaders with current immigration policy and Department of Homeland Security tactics in carrying it out. In the past week, the archbishops of Los Angeles and Minneapolis have also spoken out. “The recent killing of two people by immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis and that of a detained man in Texas, are just a few of the tragic examples of the violence that represent failures in our society to respect the dignity of every human life,” Coakley wrote, referring to the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the …

The ‘theology of showing up’ is making Minneapolis a holy place

The ‘theology of showing up’ is making Minneapolis a holy place

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — I arrived in Minneapolis on Wednesday (Jan. 21). I had come because local organizers said people were being disappeared: kidnapped off the street, detained, shot in plain daylight. I went because there was a cry for help from a devastated community. Nothing prepared me for what I saw. The city was a battleground where ICE feels like an occupying force. A Hindu organizer and activist, I went as an ally of a 50-strong Rabbis for Ceasefire delegation, some of whom I knew from our trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories in August, to see the effects of the Gaza war. I saw there firsthand what occupation looks like. Minneapolis felt occupied, too. The people of Minneapolis are responding and resisting in unspeakably brave, radically loving ways that we will speak of for years to come. Our first stop was a “convergence” of faith leaders, organized by a longstanding local coalition, MARCH (Multiracial Anti-Racist Change and Healing). After two days of education, training in nonviolent resistance, and immersion into this moment in Minneapolis, …

Hare Krishnas to sue over Florida prison ban on Hindu holy text

Hare Krishnas to sue over Florida prison ban on Hindu holy text

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — In 2023, Rakesh Patel, an inmate at the Jefferson Correctional Institution in Monticello, Florida, filed several grievances with the state’s Department of Corrections. After 10 years of incarceration, Patel said he was suddenly denied a copy of the Bhagavad Gita As It Is, the English translation and commentary on the central Sanskrit Hindu Scripture by the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Since April 2022, all copies of the text, considered one of the most prevalent editions of the Gita, have been banned from Florida prison systems. It’s among more than 20,000 books banned by the Department of Corrections’ Literature Review Committee, based in Tallahassee. “I am being deprive[d] of practicing my religion,” Patel, 58, wrote in his complaints. “This Hindu holy book is no different from Muslims’ holy book of Koran written in Arabic with English translations and the Christian Bible written in Hebrew with English translations. This committee is making a very serious mistake by rejecting this book.” Patel’s appeal was denied by the FDOC representative, who …

When the Holy Spirit Sends Warnings – OpentheWord.org

When the Holy Spirit Sends Warnings – OpentheWord.org

Published by Sam Flores

Credit: Paulius Dragunas, unsplash.com In an interview with the TV station Caracol, Colombian pop star, Yeison Jimenez, 34, spoke about having dreams warning him that he would die in a plane crash. Jimenez is one of Colombia’s most popular folk singers. “Those were the dreams. And in one of the dreams, I dreamt that we had died and that we were on the news. And it was the third time I dreamt that. God gave me three signs, and I didn’t understand them, I didn’t get them,” Jimenez said in the interview. A few weeks later, Jimenez, along with his entire band, died when their plane crashed as they were flying for a concert in Medellin on Saturday, Jan 10, 2026, the NY Post reports, At this point, I have no way of knowing if Jimenez was a Christian. But he believed God was sending him a warning. In Joel 2:28, the prophet said that in the end days God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh. Because of this, they (all flesh) would have …

Podcast: battery holy grail too good to be true, NVIDIA open sources self-driving, Tesla Model Y ‘Standard’, and more

Podcast: battery holy grail too good to be true, NVIDIA open sources self-driving, Tesla Model Y ‘Standard’, and more

Published by skeptic

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss a battery holy grail too good to be true, NVIDIA open sourcing self-driving, Tesla Model Y ‘Standard’ Long Range, and more. The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel. As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in. After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps: Advertisement – scroll for more content We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming. Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast: Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the …

Traces of Leonardo da Vinci’s DNA May Have Been Discovered on a Red Chalk Drawing Called ‘Holy Child’

Traces of Leonardo da Vinci’s DNA May Have Been Discovered on a Red Chalk Drawing Called ‘Holy Child’

Published by skeptic

Researchers from the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project (LDVP) that by analyzing the drawing of Holy Child and other Renaissance artifacts, such as letters written by a da Vinci relative, they have recovered some Y chromosome DNA sequences that appear to belong to a genetic group of people with common ancestors in Tuscany, where the genius and Renaissance master was born in 1452. The findings, first reported in Science, could be the first time scientists have identified DNA from da Vinci himself. The DNA Historical artifacts can accumulate DNA from the environment and potentially offer useful information about the people who created and handled them. Gathering that material on such precious objects without damaging or contaminating them, though, is a complex challenge. Today, decisions about the authorship of a work depend on expert opinion—for example, on how a brushstroke was created. The LDVP researchers therefore used an extremely gentle swabbing method to attempt to collect biological material. They then extracted small amounts of DNA, which provided useful information. “We recovered heterogeneous mixtures of non-human DNA,“ …

Jubilee Year ends as Pope Leo XIV closes Holy Door after historic Vatican transition

Jubilee Year ends as Pope Leo XIV closes Holy Door after historic Vatican transition

Published by Sam Flores

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — In a solemn ceremony on Tuesday morning (Jan. 6), the Feast of the Epiphany, Pope Leo XIV will close the last Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica to mark the end of the Jubilee Year, which saw profound transformations in the church with the death of Pope Francis and the beginning of a new papacy. “With a simple yet symbolic gesture, the closing of the Holy Door will close the Ordinary Jubilee of 2025,” said Mons. Rino Fisichella, the pro-prefect of the Vatican department for evangelization who oversaw the Jubilee celebration, during a Vatican press conference on Monday. “Inevitably, such an event also leads to an evaluation of this year, which was in many ways extraordinary,” he added. The Jubilee Year is a tradition that began in the Catholic Church in 1300 but is inspired by a Jewish tradition from the biblical book of Leviticus that occurred every 50 years and included the elimination of debt and the redistribution of property. The Catholic Jubilee has evolved into a celebration occurring every …

Rome Welcomed Record 33.5 Million Pilgrims for Catholic Holy Year

Rome Welcomed Record 33.5 Million Pilgrims for Catholic Holy Year

Published by Sam Flores

VATICAN CITY, Jan 5 (Reuters) – About 33.5 million pilgrims came ‌to ​Rome in 2025 for the Catholic ‌Holy Year, Vatican and Italian officials said on Monday, marking a record number of yearly ​visitors and a boon for local tourist shops, museums and restaurants. Holy years, or jubilees, typically occur every 25 years and are considered ‍a time of peace, forgiveness and ​pardon. Pilgrims to Rome can enter special “Holy Doors” at four Rome basilicas, and can see the pope at special audiences throughout ​the year. Officials ⁠said the 3.7 billion euros ($4.32 billion) of state and European funds spent on overhauling tourist sites for the occasion had been worth the investment. “The whole world has come to Rome,” Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the Vatican’s lead jubilee official, told a news conference. “The Jubilee has not been a losing investment but a driving force that has boosted … overall growth.” The year, during ‌which Catholics can also earn a special indulgence, or remission of sins, ends on Tuesday. Visitors over the past ​12 months ‌came from …

Praise be for holy sleuths

Praise be for holy sleuths

Published by Daniella Wilson

Add Grantchester to your watchlist How can there be so much murder in one otherwise quiet country parish? The answer, of course, is that there can’t. You may as well wonder how Grantchester’s vicar fits in any actual vicaring between all his crime-solving, or if any real-life cleric resembles a studio-system film star like Alphy, the ITV drama’s latest, and likely final, “Maigret of the manse”. Grantchester returns this week for series 10, with number 11 confirmed to be its last – sad news for a show that has always carried its profound messages deceptively lightly. For regardless of its comely setting, Grantchester goes a lot deeper than may at first appear. James Runcie, the creator of the original books, based his fictional vicar Sidney Chambers on the duties of his own father, a pre-Canterbury Robert Runcie, for whom “death did come to the door. There wasn’t any murder, but it was a life for my father that didn’t involve clocking off”. The author once told me he set out to write what he called …

How Choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall Helped Amanda Seyfried Embrace the Holy Spirit

How Choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall Helped Amanda Seyfried Embrace the Holy Spirit

Published by Sam Flores

If you can remember back to season two of Gossip Girl, you may recall an episode about aspiring designer Jenny Humphrey (Taylor Momsen) attempting to earn funding for her eponymous fashion line by staging a guerrilla show at a charity gala. In the middle of the stuffy reception, Jenny commandeers the A/V system, blasting punk rock while a squad of models, clad in her early-aughts emo designs, climb on tables. Even the most dedicated Gossip Girl superfans may be surprised to learn that two of the models in that scene are The Testament of Ann Lee director Mona Fastvold and her longtime collaborator, Ann Lee choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall. In a stroke of Hollywood luck, the pair met that day, becoming fast friends and launching a creative collaboration that would extend for nearly two decades. The 20-somethings worked together on music videos until their first major project: 2018’s Vox Lux, which was directed by Fastvold’s partner Brady Corbet, based on a story by Corbet and Fastvold, and choreographed by Rowlson-Hall. But even during the Vox Lux …