This year marks the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis. Yesterday, in Assisi, I visited the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, home to the small church St. Francis rebuilt after hearing Christ say, “Francis, repair My Church.” At first, he understood these words literally. The church was old and falling apart, so he repaired its stones with his own hands. In time, he realized that Christ was calling him to something greater. The Church is not only a building mad

Sculpted between 1519 and 1534, Michelangelo’s unfinished Prigioni (the Captives), now stand in Florence's Galleria dell’Accademia. They are half-trapped, half-free, frozen in a perpetual struggle to break out of the heavy, unyielding stone. Michelangelo believed that the sculpture already existed inside the marble; his job as the master artist was simply to chip away the excess stone to set it free. When we look at and think of these figures, we see a profound spiritual trut

Imagine a roof that follows you as you walk. In Bologna, that is exactly what happens. The Portico of San Luca stretches for 2.4 miles, creating a covered path of hundreds of arches that leads all the way up a steep hill to the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca at its summit. Holding the record as the world's longest covered walkway, construction on this epic structure started in 1674 to shield pilgrims from the weather during their hilltop processions. As I walked beneath