Local News
500 kids enjoy ‘the best day ever’ with Archbishop Chaput at Christmas party
The Archbishop's Christmas Benefit for Children, in its 61st year, treated some of the 16,000 children across the region served annually by Catholic Social Services to a grand party with treats, gifts, songs and a pageant, plus Santa Claus.
Archbishop Chaput wishes all a joyous Christmas
Listen to the audio Christmas message of Archbishop Charles Chaput.
Archbishop Chaput’s words inspire, comfort prison inmates
During a visit Dec. 15 to the largest prison in Philadelphia, the archbishop emphasized all people are sinners, and he told the Curran-Fromhold inmates, “the people who will go to heaven are people like you.”
In Advent, the faithful pray special prayers at Mary’s shrine
Amidst all the decorating and shopping, Christians are also praying more intently this season in their homes, parish churches and, for Catholics near Germantown, at the Shrine of the Miraculous Medal.
Catholic congregation of former Anglicans seeing growth
St. John the Baptist Parish, part of a personal ordinariate in the Catholic Church for former Anglican and Episcopalian Christians, needed a larger church and found a home in a merged Catholic parish in Bridgeport, Montgomery County.
5,000 pounds of food from Goya will feed hungry families
The food company donated a truckload of food to archdiocesan Nutritional Development Services, which will distribute it to 50 food cupboards in the archdiocese. NDS provided 2.3 million meals last year, up 6 percent.
Fathers key to strong family and society, writer tells Serra Club
Members of the club that prays and works to promote vocations heard a speaker reflect on fatherhood and warn of the societal dangers when children grow up without a father. Almost half of those kids will live in poverty.
Villa Joseph Marie students dance for 10 hours, raise $89K to fight child cancer
Students of the Bucks County girls' high school wore out shoe leather all year by gathering donations from the community ahead of the dance-a-thon last Friday night. The money they raised blew away last year's total of $12,000.
Four churches to close in Philadelphia, Montgomery and Chester counties
The churches, which mostly had been worship sites of merged parishes, include St. Augustine, Bridgeport; Assumption B.V.M., West Grove; and St. Therese and St. Madeleine Sophie, both in Philadelphia’s Mount Airy section.
Christians in Middle East face grim reality, Villanova speakers say
The university hosted an international conference this week on religious minorities in the Holy Land. Panelists described the complex causes of Christian diaspora including the 2003 Iraq War. Peaceful resolution may take a generation to enact, said one speaker with local ties.