As a young seminarian serving at St. Agnes of Bohemia parish in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, I came to appreciate many customs and traditions that I had never heard of as the son of an Irish immigrant. One of these customs was la mordida or “the bite.” This custom is …

By Madalaine Elhabbal Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 3, 2025 / 13:35 pm Seminaries and their formators are beginning to rethink what formation should look like in the U.S. following reports that enrollment at graduate-level seminaries is continuing to decline. The fall 2025 CARA report released by the Center for Applied Research in the …

“This is at the very heart of the diaconate to which you have been called: to be a servant of the mysteries of Christ and, at one and the same time, to be a servant of your brothers and sisters. That these two dimensions are inseparably joined together in one …

Two thousand years ago, in a place near Bethany beyond the Jordan river, Jesus asked this question of Andrew: “What are you looking for?” (Jn. 1:38). These are the first words that Jesus speaks in John’s Gospel. His question becomes a theme: He asks it after the Resurrection of Mary …

While reflecting on vocations, my imagination kept landing on my favorite lines from The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. They’re from a conversation between Frodo, a small hobbit, and Gandalf, a wise, old wizard, in the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring. Gandalf is explaining a …

By Nicolás de Cárdenas ACI Prensa Staff, Aug 25, 2025 / 16:57 pm Pope Leo XIV said during an audience with French altar servers in Rome on Aug. 25, the feast day of St. Louis IX, king of France, that the shortage of priests is “a great misfortune” for the Catholic Church, encouraging …

By Kate Quiñones Denver, Colo., Aug 18, 2025 / 06:00 am The Archdiocese of Denver asked parishioners to share the names of young men they thought would make good priests. The result? More than 900 names. But names aren’t the only outcome of the Called By Name campaign, which launched in May. …

By Tessa Gervasini Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 16, 2025 / 15:30 pm A new study has found that “reciting the rosary privately” is the most popular Marian devotion among those discerning a religious vocation. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University published its June 2025 report: “Impact …

When navigating the wild world of vocational discernment, there seem to be two prevailing strategies. One approach is to keep a meticulous regimen: swiping between dating apps and convent contact pages with disciplined rigor until God’s plan becomes plain. The other is to sit back and prayerfully wait for the …

When I was young, a priest spoke of Our Lady with these words: “The greatest prayer you can offer in this life is for the grace to give the Holy Spirit the freedom to do with, in, and through you whatever He wishes, as Our Lady did in her Fiat. …