Daniel Esparza

In one of Latin America's largest slums, the Church mobilized within hours of the Venezuelan earthquakes. A bishop's account from the ground.

The children were playing in the rock pools when their father started what would become the most widely read work of fiction of the twentieth century.

He borrowed a friend's country villa, brought his mother and his students, and spent the time arguing about happiness. A model for any summer retreat.

Between May and August, the liturgical calendar offers five encounters with the Virgin Mary. Each has its own landscape, its own traditions, and its own theology.

The welcome of the stranger has a long history. Christianity didn't invent it—but it changed it in ways still felt every time someone opens a door.

The Church has a blessing for beer and a saint who may have invented windsurfing. So of course there's a patron saint for swimmers. His story is better than you'd expect.

Father Francis Morgan gave Tolkien a home and a father. Father Robert Murray gave him the words to describe what he had made.

The heat slows you down, the crowds thin out inside, and the silence of a cathedral in July does something to you that no beach can replicate.

Most people say Christopher. Some say James. The answer that comes with a scriptural address, a fish, and a demon is older and stranger than either.

The Sistine Chapel will cost you. But Caravaggio in San Luigi dei Francesi is free, and nobody is queuing.