Many European volunteers came to the aid of America during the Revolutionary War, believing in the righteousness of the colonial cause while also looking for an opportunity to serve.

by Andrew Petiprin On June 24, 2026, Pope Leo XIV addressed a group of writers to celebrate one hundred years since the founding of the Libreria Editrice Vaticana, the Holy See’s publishing house. You can find the whole speech here. Acknowledging “an opportune moment to reflect on the importance of books and of writing,” the Holy Father described literary expression as “an act of truth, of revelation.” In my favorite paragraph of the speech, he explained, “When you write st

My generation has been educated in nearly every skill except the one Aquinas assumed we would know: how to be ordered toward God.

Andrzej Wajda has done what the greatest artists do: he has made another people's history feel like my own. This is a testament to the enduring value of his art.

One must encourage the likes of Mr. Chalamet, therefore, to change his tune: Long live ballet, long live opera, and long live cinema.

It is time for the West to wash our faces, look in the mirror, and see who we really are. Make-up, Morrissey reminds us on this gift of twelve wonderful new songs, is a lie.

A major focus of our project at the Spe Salvi Institute is the spiritual and cultural proximity of the people of the United States and the peoples of Europe. Indeed, we are sympathetic to the idea of a greater Europe, of which the United States is now the senior partner economically and militarily, but for which the Old World remains the ancient spiritual capital.

For the humanist Christian there is only one possible attitude that he can take towards the world: he must love.

Eric Rohmer's late films reveal the indelible Christian mark on the secular West.

Prog-rockers, like mystics, often attempt to go deep, or better yet, to lead us somewhere – somewhere more enriching than where we currently are; somewhere that requires patience and focus to experience fully.

Reading After Virtue was like finding a map of the intellectual terrain I had been stumbling through in the dark.

'Authority' is a term in disrepute, often connoting something negative like authoritarianism and totalitarianism. But the Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce did not see it that way. He believed that our age is experiencing a profound crisis of authority. In his long, illuminating essay "Authority and Power", Del Noce argues that "the eclipse of the idea of authority is one of the essential characteristics of today's world; in fact, it is the most immediately observable cha

With the election of an Augustinian pope, will ancient wisdom be given another chance to help solve modern problems?

Pope Leo XIV frames his pontificate as a response to today's urgent social question —one beyond the context of the first industrial revolution, but in the emerging challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor that stem from developments in artificial intelligence.

A Pope from the South Side of Chicago — and a White Sox fan? Unbelievable. No one thought we'd see an American Pope in our lifetime—let...

Modern society has forgotten the dignity of work—but the life of my father-in-law and the witness of St. Joseph remind us what real work means.

I first heard of Pope John Paul II's death from a news reporter outside the St. Louis Cathedral, while visiting Saint Louis University —...

As a Western man, I believe it is no accident that the seat of the Catholic Church is in Europe. Indeed, Western civilization and the Cathol

Larry Chapp spent the last month in Rome commentating on the Synod on Synodality. His letters on the Synod were published at First Things. I