Overcoming great obstacles, many Cubans are returning to the Catholic faith and helping renew the island’s church.

To this day Aldo Santos remembers with gratitude the frequent blackouts he experienced as a child in his native town of Holguín in northeast Cuba. Everyone in the neighborhood would come out of their house to gaze at the stars.

He would look up and ask his father about the moon and the planets and about a future full of dreams. He learned that even galaxies die, and it was then that he began to understand something about the end of things.

The special interest groups pulling legislators’ strings can no longer hide in the shadows.

The shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida has focused national attention on the at times mortal perils faced by African American teens due to racial profiling. But the use of deadly force against a young man armed only with a bag of Skittles also inadvertently spotlighted an organization, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), that generally prefers to work in the background of U.S. politics.

When the Word became flesh, all creation was drawn into the divine embrace. 

In our day concerns about ecology are rising. Climate change, pollution, and extinction of plant and animal species make us question harmful human treatment of the natural world.

In Appalachia, the coal industry thrives on stripping the landscape—and people’s livelihoods.

[Watch the slideshow that accompanies this article.]

Rick Handshoe lives on the battle line. Explosions shake his house regularly, covering it with dust and debris and cracking its foundation. A convoy of supply trucks rumbles constantly past his front porch. He lives amid danger and disturbance, with peace but a distant memory.