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Dear Friends, The season of Advent renews our hope for the reign of God’s peace and love, signified by the birth of a baby in Bethlehem. But almost immediately, Christmas is followed by the feast of Holy Innocents, when King Herod tried to extinguish that hope in its cradle. Those innocents represent all those who die in the dream of a different possible world, hoping but never knowing that their redeemer lives. How are we to read the story of Jesus through the lens of our current reality—significantly, in Bethlehem itself, but also closer to home? It is an ongoing...

Dear Friends,             What to say about the conclusion of a divisive election season? What to say about a victory marked by “brazen appeals to nativism, racism, and misogyny” (New York Times); a campaign fueled by the demonization of migrants and refugees (“animals,” “vermin”); punctuated by violent threats of retribution against political rivals (“the enemy within)”—all in pursuit of “Making America Great Again”?             In his speech before Congress almost ten years ago Pope Francis offered a very different vision of what makes a nation great. As he observed, “A nation can be considered great...

Dear Friends, As you may know by now, our esteemed author and friend, Gustavo Gutierrez, died last night, October 22, at the age of 96, in Lima. He had been ill for some time. Gustavo was not only the "father" of liberation theology, but truly the cornerstone of the Orbis program. In 1973 we published the English translation of A Theology of Liberation, which Christianity Today named as one of the 100 most important theological works of the twentieth century. This inaugurated a whole program of works by the greatest generation of Latin American theologians: Gustavo himself, Jon Sobrino, Jose Combin, Leonardo...

Dear Friends, Each year the church commemorates the feast of St. Mary Magdalene, “apostle to the apostles,” who first proclaimed the good news of Jesus’s resurrection. But there are other women whose names are not remembered. There is the woman who anointed Jesus with precious oil, whose deed, Jesus said, would be told in memory of her. Or the Samaritan woman who described to her neighbors her encounter with Jesus, so that many of them “believed because of her testimony.” Since then, many women, whether by word or deed, have continued to bear witness to the faith. Thanks to the...

Dear Friends, I just returned from the annual assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a gathering of representatives from most Catholic religious congregations in America. I always look forward to gathering with some of our most informed, discerning, and avid readers. Not surprisingly, their favorites this year—all by women religious--were also are our bestselling titles of the year. First of these is Elizabeth Johnson’s Come, Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and the Earth. Johnson, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph, is without doubt one of the leading Catholic theologians in the United States, best known for...