If you happen to be in Rome on Christmas Day, you can visit the Vatican's featured Nativity scene from Peru. It's populated by some 30 characters — people and animals — authentically garbed and posed ...

Seeing Santas at every corner and checkout counter, Christmas trees adorning every public place, lights blinking and "Joy to the World" blaring from all directions, we tend to forget the historical ...

Advent means preparing the Christmas Nativity scene, which the Holy Father encourages every family to include in their homes. And not just that. Pope Francis, in his recent apostolic letter, ...

Sandro Botticelli, "The Mystical Nativity" (1500), oil on canvas, held at the National Gallery, London (photo via Wikimedia Commons) The Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola had been martyred less than ...

The season of the Nativity invites us to pause, to listen, and to rediscover God in the ordinary rhythms of life. In Guyana, Christmas arrives not only with hymns and candlelight, but with the sound ...

As Christmas approaches, the pontiff dedicated today’s general audience to the 800th anniversary of the first nativity scene by Saint Francis in Greccio. For him, this representation is a “school of ...

Pilgrims hold up figurines of the Christ Child as Pope Francis leads the Angelus from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican Dec 15, 2019. (Credit: CNS photo/Vatican ...

The title of this essay does double duty: it is the title of Botticelli’s painting and the theme I want to explore. On Sundays, we profess our faith in God who is Creator of “all things, visible and ...

A coalition of atheist and humanist groups last summer booked up all available exhibition space around Christmas Day in Lincoln, to set up their own exhibit When Christmas comes to Lincoln, Nebraska ...