Catholic News 2
HAVANA (AP) -- Six months after President Raul Castro declared war on the Zika virus in Cuba, a militarized nationwide campaign of intensive mosquito spraying, monitoring and quarantine appears to be working....
ATLANTA (AP) -- Donald Trump will visit a predominantly black church in Detroit this weekend and, his campaign says, "outline policies that will impact minorities and the disenfranchised in our country." It's the latest move in the Republican presidential nominee's outreach to non-whites....
CARRABELLE, Florida (AP) -- Hurricane Hermine made landfall in Florida's Big Bend area early Friday as the first hurricane to hit the state in more than a decade....
Washington D.C., Sep 1, 2016 / 07:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The canonization portrait of Bl. Mother Teresa, a copy of which will hang from St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday, is meant to reflect her joy and her selflessness, said the artist.“The credit lies more with the subject of the painting than with the painter,” artist Chas Fagan said in a press conference introducing the portrait.“That picture will bring lots of people closer to God,” Sister Tanya, M.C., the superior at the Missionaries of Charity Gift of Peace house in Washington, D.C., said of the portrait. She knew Bl. Mother Teresa from having lived in the same building with her as a novice.Bl. Mother Teresa, foundress of the Missionaries of Charity, will be canonized on Sunday, Sept. 4 in St. Peter’s Square. An enlarged copy of her portrait will hang from St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Knights of Columbus will have one million prayer cards with the portrait on them available for pilgrim...
Washington D.C., Sep 1, 2016 / 07:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The canonization portrait of Bl. Mother Teresa, a copy of which will hang from St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday, is meant to reflect her joy and her selflessness, said the artist.
“The credit lies more with the subject of the painting than with the painter,” artist Chas Fagan said in a press conference introducing the portrait.
“That picture will bring lots of people closer to God,” Sister Tanya, M.C., the superior at the Missionaries of Charity Gift of Peace house in Washington, D.C., said of the portrait. She knew Bl. Mother Teresa from having lived in the same building with her as a novice.
Bl. Mother Teresa, foundress of the Missionaries of Charity, will be canonized on Sunday, Sept. 4 in St. Peter’s Square. An enlarged copy of her portrait will hang from St. Peter’s Basilica, and the Knights of Columbus will have one million prayer cards with the portrait on them available for pilgrims in Rome.
Her official canonization portrait was unveiled Thursday at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, D.C. It was “commissioned out of the love and high esteem that the Knights of Columbus has for Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity,” Pat Kelly, executive director of the shrine, stated at the unveiling.
The Knights “worked with her for over two decades, beginning in the 1970’s,” he noted. “Since her death, the Knights of Columbus has honored Mother Teresa through its continuing support of the Missionaries of Charity.”
Fagan, who has painted portraits of all the U.S. presidents and whose work has appeared in the U.S. Capitol rotunda and National Cathedral, was commissioned by the Knights to paint Bl. Mother Teresa’s portrait after he had done previous work for them, including a statue of Pope St. John Paul II.
His “immediate answer was yes” when the Knights asked him to do the portrait, but he had “no idea” it would be the official one hanging in St. Peter’s. Fagan submitted initial sketches and the whole process “took at least a month” before he could even begin painting, which then took six weeks.
The “hook” for the painting, he said, was Mother Teresa’s quote that “joy is strength.” She was a “diminutive, yet somehow earth-shaking figure,” he added, and others who had met her told him that “somehow when she looked at you she was glowing, she was radiant.”
So he tried to make that come through in the picture. “If you want to make something glow, you have to surround it with darkness,” he said of the painting.
What also struck Fagan about Mother Teresa’s life was her “selflessness,” he said.
“There’s a theme that came about from a mentor I had as a boy in high school,” he said, where “if you just start helping someone else, whatever your problems are will start to disappear.”
Mother Teresa lived this out, he said. “And so learning of her life, and seeing how she lived it every single day, that’s just so humbling. And we can all aspire to it, but it’s a big leap,” he added.
Fagan was actually able to feel the saint’s presence in his studio while painting the portrait, he explained. “When you have a portrait in the studio, you kind of get to live with it,” he said, especially toward the end of the painting when it really starts to come to life and when the lights are dim, you can see them there.”
“And having to say goodbye is the worst,” he said. “In the end, Mother Theresa brought joy to my studio, to my home, and now I will miss her company.”
The picture is “superb,” Sister Tanya said. She noted the portrayal of Mother’s “penetrating eyes,” serenity, and her “focusing on the person that she’s looking at.”
“If someone looks at her, they would lift up their eyes to heaven, I would say, because she’s not focusing on herself,” Sister Tanya said. “The person who looks at her would be focusing on God.”
LONDON (AP) -- Scientists trying to predict the future path of Zika say that 2.6 billion people living in parts of Asia and Africa could be at risk of infection, based on a new analysis of travel, climate and mosquito patterns in those regions....
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Colin Kaepernick and San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid kneeled during the national anthem Thursday night, continuing the quarterback's preseason protest of American racial injustice and minority oppression....
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A gunman who killed a federal airport screening officer and wounded three people in a terrifying rampage at Los Angeles International Airport three years ago agreed to plead guilty in a deal that spares him from a possible death sentence....
BEIRUT (AP) -- Syria's government secured a deal to restore its authority over another rebellious Damascus suburb on Thursday while Syrian rebels captured new ground in a lightning advance on the central city of Hama and suspected government airstrikes killed 25 civilians in the surrounding province....
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- A massive fireball and explosion erupted Thursday at SpaceX's main launch pad, destroying a rocket as well as a satellite that Facebook was counting on to spread internet service in Africa....
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said Thursday that Republican standard-bearer Donald Trump's proposals represent a "threat" to his country, a day after the two men met in the Mexican capital....
