An admirable theologian, a shrewd diplomat and a most influential ecclesiastic: these are some of the attributes of the one who has just departed this life, Pope Benedict XVI. Hardly anyone could more aptly fulfil all the requirements for the office of Supreme Pontiff in our times than Joseph Ratzinger; and I believe there are…
Technology has made astonishing progress in the field of armaments over the past decades. Innovations of this kind are frequently reported, even more so in the context of the threatening conflict in Ukraine. Nevertheless, a nation’s military power cannot be reduced to the mere production and stockpiling of weapons. In war, each side typically seeks…
For some decades now the age-old habit of writing letters has been disappearing. Since ancient times, written on papyrus or parchment and even on clay or stone tablets, these means of communication have always reflected the customs, education and mentality of the peoples. The millennia-old stone stelae, tablets on which messages were written in ancient…
It is said of Cardinal Ercole Consalvi that, in conversation with an opponent of the Catholic religion, he jokingly asked: “How do you think you can destroy the Church if not even we cardinals have managed to do it?…” Historical or not, these words contain a profound truth. Two thousand years have passed since the…
The night of July 18 or 19 of 64 AD was the setting for the event that would mark the reign of Emperor Nero until the end of the world. A torrid summer oppressed the residents of Rome, the capital of an empire whose dimensions stretched to the limits of the known world. The alarm…
There have been periods in history when Holy Church has shone before men with great splendour, like a queen ruling over her people firmly and sweetly; at other times, she has made herself small in the arms of her sons, hiding her wisdom and grandeur in order to be carried by them, like the Infant…
The title of this article hearkens back to an old proverb1, referring to the need to care for a sapling from the start, directing its growth with stakes and removing undesirable shoots with pruning. Applied to man, the maxim correlates with the biblical dictum: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and…
On many occasions in history, the future of a nation, or even of the world, has been decided on the basis one apparently weak soul, who nevertheless carried within himself the promise of great achievements. Louis II of Bourbon, Prince of Condé – Palace of Versailles (France) Thus, the magnificent France of the early 17th…
Countless events have occurred since man began to inhabit this earth, but few of them are relevant enough to deserve being passed on to future generations. Perhaps this is why so many have undertaken extraordinary measures to accomplish some feat that would give them a share in a much-coveted goal: to appear in the perennial…
The end of the 19th century revealed a dazzling Western civilization, which seemed to have materialized every dream of wealth and splendour hitherto imaginable. At the head of the brilliant Prussian army, Otto von Bismarck asserted: “I am bored; we have already done every great thing”; Germany was enjoying an industrial miracle; the intellectual and…
