A year ago today Pope John Paul II was beatified in a ceremony at Saint Peter’s Square, just six years after his death. Last month I visited both John Paul’s hometown of Wadowice and the Archdiocesan Museum of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła in Kraków during a trip to Poland
Tomorrow the Jeremy Deller retrospective ‘Joy in People’ opens at London’s Hayward Gallery. Part of the exhibition will engage with ‘Deller’s interest in the social character of pop music’ and ‘the enthusiasms, rituals and passionate loyalty of fans [which] have all provided the artist with inspiration’
The biblical foundation for a celibate priesthood is flimsy, and now cracks are beginning to show in the Catholic church’s ban on marriage for those in holy orders
Even the most iconic of religious artworks can have profound meanings for the nonbeliever
Chapter published in Peter Clarke and Tony Claydon (eds), Studies in Church History 47: Sainthood and Sanctity (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 376-89
Since its Roman inception Valentine’s Day has ranged from a celebration of sexuality to a plea for purity
Ignited by the Smolensk crash, bitter tensions have emerged between Poland’s Catholics and liberal secularists
It may be popular among ordinary Catholics, but the cult of St Thérèse serves the hierarchy’s political purposes well
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux is one of the most popular saints of the modern Catholic Church, holding a number of prestigious titles and being the focus of a wildly successful popular cult. A Carmelite nun at fifteen years old, she died only nine years later, producing in the intervening years plays, poems, prayers, a large correspondence and, most importantly, an autobiography
Sophia Deboick 