Pastors

Maria Isabel Cipple Leon, a cancer patient at UNC Hospitals in Charlotte, the United States, was supposed to get married in a wedding at her church earlier this month. But when it became unclear if she would be healthy enough to leave the intensive care unit, her medical team and UNC’s chaplain’s office rallied together in under a week to put on a wedding at the hospital’s own chapel. A medical student on her team brought a cake. Residents brought a bouquet of flowers, which they used to decorate the bride’s wheelchair. The physical therapy team and the bride’s nurses helped her, with all her lines and tubes, into a wedding dress. The chaplain’s office coordinated with her pastor on scheduling, paperwork and logistics. Food Services made sure there were enough cupcakes to go around. The result was a true wedding ceremony — one that surrounded the couple with family, loved ones and medical staff who had cared for the bride, and that enveloped the hospital in a kind of joy and love … [Read more...] about She was too sick to make her wedding, so hospital staff brought it to her

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 15 ROME (AP) — Pope Francis celebrated families Saturday and urged them to shun “selfish” decisions that are indifferent to life as he closed out a big Vatican rally a day after the U.S. Supreme Court ended constitutional protections for abortion. Francis didn’t refer to the ruling or explicitly mention abortion in his homily. But he used the buzzwords he has throughout his papacy about the need to defend families and to condemn a “culture of waste” that he believes is behind the societal acceptance of abortion. “Let us not allow the family to be poisoned by the toxins of selfishness, individualism, today's culture of indifference and waste, and as a result lose its very DNA, which is the spirit of welcoming and service,” he said. The pope, noting that some couples allow their fears and anxieties to “thwart the … [Read more...] about Pope hails families, blasts ‘culture of waste’ after Roe