26 January 2020

• Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, former head of Congregation for Bishops, elected new dean of the College of Cardinals...
  Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re has been elected the new dean of the College of Cardinals with Cardinal Leonardo Sandri as vice-dean. Re, 85, will serve a five-year term under the new term limits created by Pope Francis in a motu proprio issued Dec. 21. Previously, cardinal dean, considered “first among equals,” was a position held for the duration of one’s life...
• As an “act of mercy,” God has given some saints visions of Hell. Here’s what we can learn from them.....
  Hell is the final guarantee that what we do here and now really matters: That’s the message Paul Thigpen gives in the book Saints Who Saw Hell: And Other Catholic Witnesses to the Fate of the Damned. “If Hell doesn’t exist, then all roads lead to the same destination, whether it’s Heaven, or annihilation, or something else...
• Elizabeth Wurtzel made a mess of her life, and ended up dying as she lived.....
  “This is it for me,” she declared in the pages of New York magazine just seven years ago. “I am a free spirit. I do not know any other way to be. No one else seems to live as I do. In a world gone wrong, a pure heart is dangerous.” Elizabeth Wurtzel died last week, of cancer. She was only 52. She’d come to fame at 27...
• Are you a “conversational narcissist?” Here’s how to recognize it, and how to avoid it.....
  Last month I met up with an old friend I hadn’t seen in forever to have lunch. Having both read and written about how to be an effective and charismatic conversationalist, I followed the old dictum of listening more than talking and asking the other person engaging questions about themselves. This is supposed to charm your conversation partner...
• Father Leo Heinrichs, Denver priest shot at Mass in 1908, could be declared a saint...
  When Joseph Heinrichs fled Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf in Germany, he thought he was escaping persecution. He didn’t know that shortly after being ordained a Franciscan priest and taking the religious name Leo, he would be shot because of one man’s hatred for the Catholic faith. Fr. Leo Heinrichs initially served at various places in New York and New Jersey...