Fr Timothy Finigan

Has been received into the Catholic Church. Please pray for me.

A Christmas tradition in Bethlehem is the chanting of Luke’s account of Our Lord’s birth at the very place where it happened, concluding with the great throng of Heaven singing “Glory to God in the highest”, which is taken up by the Franciscans, who chant Gloria in excelsis Deo

4 December 1829. British authorities abolished the Hindu funeral ritual called Sati (“Suttee”). This was the custom of a widow burning herself to death by throwing herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.

A group of Carmelite monks deep in the mountains of Wyoming is doing something few would dare. They’re building a towering Gothic monastery… with CNC machines. Yes. An ancient monastic order is using cutting-edge tech to create a structure that looks like it could have risen in the Middle Ages. Twenty years ago, they came to Meeteetse with $400 and a dream no one believed in. Experts told them their monastery would cost $80 million. It was impossible. So they did what monks have done for centuries: they adapted. They taught themselves how to carve stone with diamond-tipped CNC machines. No formal training. No engineering background. Just faith, grit, and prayer. Block by block, some weighing over 4,000 pounds, they’re shaping angels, gargoyles, and ribbed arches worthy of a medieval cathedral. Their goal: a chapel that could stand for a thousand years. A masterpiece hidden in the Wyoming wilderness. Some say it’s madness. Others say it’s a miracle in slow motion. What do you call it?