Despite intense bombing and severe food shortages, several Carmelite nuns are refusing to abandon the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo and have appealed for urgent aid.
“The bombs are falling all around us, but we are not going to leave the people in their suffering,” said Sister Anne-Francoise, a French nun from a community of Discalced Carmelites in Aleppo. “The people here are suffering and dying.”
The 2018 Winter Olympic Games, the 17-day athletic love-fest kicking off to the beat of the Korean janggu drum in Pyeongchang on Feb. 9, are a secular endeavor featuring more fanfare than faith, more spectacle than spirit.
But it was not always so.
On the seventh day, Simone Biles rests.
That’s the day the world gymnastics champion, who has a clear shot at the medal podium in Rio, goes to church with her family.
Biles, a first-time Olympian, is a Catholic. She has said she routinely lights a candle to St. Sebastian, the patron saint of athletes and of Rio, before each meet.