Free Republic

Next week, the California Department of Education will vote on a new statewide ethnic studies curriculum that advocates for the “decolonization” of American society and elevates Aztec religious symbolism—all in the service of a left-wing political ideology. The new program, called the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, seeks to extend the Left’s cultural dominance of California’s public university system, 50 years in the making, to the state’s entire primary and secondary education system, which consists of 10,000 public schools serving a total of 6 million students. In theoretical terms, the new ethnic studies curriculum is based on the “pedagogy of the...

Cardinal Robert Prevost has been elected pope and will be known as Pope Leo XIV. The 69-year-old is the first American to become a pontiff and will lead members of the Catholic Church's global community of 1.4bn people. Born in Chicago, he is seen as a reformer and worked for many years as a missionary in Peru before being made an archbishop there. He also has Peruvian nationality and is fondly remembered as a figure who worked with marginalised communities and helped build bridges in the local Church. Why do popes choose different names? One of the first acts of...

Part one of Two WACONIA, Minn. — It was a Saturday night, and Father Larry Blake had just celebrated Mass at St. Joseph’s Church in Waconia, Minn. He hadn’t eaten dinner and longed to spend time visiting with his wife and children.“No sooner had I sat down than our emergency line rang,” said Father Blake, a former Lutheran pastor who was ordained to the priesthood in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 1999. “Someone at the hospital needed the anointing of the sick. I determined I had enough time to finish eating dinner and then left for the...