Located in southeast Yugoslavia, just off the Adriatic coast, the little village of Medjugorie wasn’t even mentioned on Yugoslav maps published a decade ago. Before 1981, Medjugorie was notable only as the quiet home to several thousand peasant farmers who grew tobacco, grapes and wheat, and steered their cows and goats along unpaved country roads. But, ever since the Mother…
Joseph Stella is remembered most for being one of America’s greatest modernist painters. Man Ray’s memorable portrait, circa 1920, poses him belly up to a bar behind a bottle of beer and a Spanish guitar. With his broad-brim hat and his wise-guy smile, it’s the portrait of the artist as bard and bringer of new songs for a new world.…
Lucy Saavedra will always remember the fiesta days at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City—the brilliant sunlight in the afternoon and the carnival atmosphere; the joyful bustle and clamor in the square; the excited chatter of the boys and the girls all dressed-up like 16th-century native peasants; the jangling bracelets and anklets of the natives who…
By David Scott In November 1848, the specter of revolution sweeping through Europe finally reached Rome. On Nov. 15, extremists executed Pellegrino Rossi, the newly named governor of the Papal States. Angry mobs roamed the streets, surrounding the papal palace on the Quirinal Hill. Besieged for nine days, Blessed Pope Pius IX finally fled under cover of night, disguised as…
On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII declared a new dogma of the Catholic Church—a truth revealed by God to be believed by the faithful: that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the end of her time on earth, was assumed, or taken up, into heaven.