WASHINGTON, D.C. — Representative Nancy Pelosi cautioned that if people persist in asking her whether aliens are real, she will order the mothership to blow up the earth with its superlaser.
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OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — In an attempt to somehow garner even more foul calls, the Oklahoma City Thunder have replaced star player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander with a wacky flailing inflatable tube man.
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View of the coastal artillery site Castillitos, Cartagena, Spain. It was built together with the coastal artillery Cenizas in order to protect the entrance to the Bay of Cartagena in the Mediterranean Sea. The construction took place between 1933 and 1936 following a project from 1926 during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. It’s a Spanish National Heritage Monument since 1985.
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Born May 10, 1900, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was also the first person to discover that stars are primarily made up of hydrogen and helium — a finding that took years to be acknowledged by the scientific community. Born in Wendover, England, Payne-Gaposchkin was an active student. She attended Cambridge University with an interest in science butContinue reading “May 10, 1900: The birth of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin”
The post May 10, 1900: The birth of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin appeared first on Astronomy Magazine.
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On the night of April 18, federal agents intercepted Shamim Mafi at Los Angeles International Airport as she attempted to board a flight to Istanbul.
The post Iranian Agent in the U.S. Coordinates Arms Pipeline Fueling the Sudan War appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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A pair of men in central India attacked a local pastor and his family, attempting to drive them from their home because of their Christian faith.
The post Mob Attacks Indian Pastor and His Family as Villagers Try to Drive Him Away from Home appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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Jeffries was reacting to the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision blocking the state’s newly drawn congressional map, a ruling that delivered a major setback to Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
The post Hakeem Jeffries Admits Democrats’ Real Plan: Rewrite the Courts When They Lose (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Read More![After stillbirth loss, mother of 7 returns to school to help others heal #Catholic After experiencing an unimaginable loss, Kelly Helsel felt called to begin a new chapter. Following 17 years as a stay-at-home mother, she returned to school to pursue her dream of becoming a counselor — hoping to offer others the same compassionate support and Catholic guidance that helped bring healing to her own life.In 2023 Helsel’s daughter, Mary Catherine, was stillborn. The experience and grief was ultimately “a huge catalyst to me going back to school,” Helsel told EWTN News.“I think death has an interesting way of snapping your priorities in line,” she said. “And through the death of our daughter, I understood that tomorrow was not promised. And I had been holding this dream very closely for 17 years, just trusting,” she said.“Much of my healing process after the stillbirth of our daughter was helped along by solid Catholic counseling,” she said. “So I just felt a whisper at first, and then I felt like, ‘I can turn around and be this for someone else in need.’ And so I did.”Path back to schoolA native of Arizona, Helsel met her now-husband, Doug, in high school. She then attended Northern Arizona University to receive a bachelorʼs degree in psychology with the hopes of becoming a counselor, but motherhood ultimately became her first priority.“My firstborn … was born during finals week of my bachelorʼs degree,” Helsel said. “I actually had a positive pregnancy test the day before I was scheduled to take the GRE [Graduate Record Examination].”“I just knew that motherhood was the priority and that Godʼs timing would take care of things. So I stayed at home,” she said.Helsel decided to put her plans of working as a counselor on the side and focus on her growing family. She and her husband had seven children over the next 17 years, but after the loss of their sixth child she felt called to switch her plans and return to school. “We just started taking one step in front of the other,” she said. Helsel started by applying to the University of Mary’s master’s program for counseling about six months after her daughter’s passing but was thrown an unexpected “curveball” during the process.“On the feast of the Annunciation, I got in. But then I also had a positive pregnancy test with my daughter, Isabel, on the very same day.”“I remember standing in the bathroom with my husband with my phone in one hand with an acceptance letter, and on the counter was a positive pregnancy test with our seventh baby.”Motherhood provided ‘the skills to be a fantastic student’Despite navigating grief, welcoming a new baby, and continuing to care for the rest of her family, Helsel not only decided to return to school but also opted for a five-semester accelerated program.She graduated on April 25 with a 4.0 GPA and her whole family by her side. It was all possible not in spite of her 17 years as a stay-at-home mom but because of the experience.
Kelly Helsel, her husband Doug Helsel, and their children at her graduation a the University of Mary on April 25, 2026. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Kelly Helsel
“I actually think that motherhood, 17 years of motherhood, gave me the skills to be a fantastic student,” she said. “I learned time management. I learned prioritization. I learned how to ask for help. I learned all kinds of things in the trenches of motherhood that gave me the opportunity to really thrive at UMary.” “I guess the loss of my daughter really showed me that like all things are ‘figure-out-able,’” she said. “When youʼve gone through something like that, it makes you unafraid to do really big things.”“I knew that I could just cannonball into the deep end and we could do this. And my husband was an amazing support throughout the program. But, Isabel was the curveball of all curveballs,” she said.“She was born during Christmas break and I just jumped back in in January. I didnʼt take any time off,” she said. "I would be in a rocking chair breastfeeding her, and my laptop is sitting next to me and Iʼm listening to a lecture.”“I became a pro at using the dictation tool on Microsoft Word” so “I could hold my baby and dictate a paper,” she said. “It was just a really wild time. I learned to be extremely flexible and gentle with myself ... But I just knew God was like, ‘go, go right now.’”“It was super bumpy at some points,“ she said. ”But I chose the University of Mary because I feel like [University of Mary president] Monsignor [James] Shea and the university really put their money where their mouth is in terms of supporting nontraditional students — especially mothers.”“All of my professors were extremely accommodating with extensions if I needed one. A few professors gave me early finals because Isabel was born right at the end of that first semester,” she said. “So the University of Mary was really crucial to my success because everyone was behind me.” Helsel noted that her professors, especially counseling professor Olivia Wedel, and other facility members and students were champions in cheering her “all the way to the finish line.”Waddell “would always remind me that ‘Iʼm surrounded by support,’” Helsel said. “When youʼre super tired and youʼre on your fourth Crock-Pot meal of the week and you donʼt have anymore bandwidth left, I just thought, ‘I am surrounded by support.’”“Jesus is real and his promises are too,” Helsel said. “I just remember really having to trust the Lord in a new way and also having to be very open to my dream not looking exactly like I wanted.”“So yes, I went back to school and I got a masterʼs degree, but it looked absolutely nothing like I thought it was going to, but it was also better, just like he had promised me.”“Your dreams matter to him,“ she said. ”Trust him, and especially Our Lady, with your dreams. Because he wants both. He wants your motherhood and your dreams.”Catholic counseling offers ‘the keys to real human flourishing’Officially a licensed counselor, Helsel is ready to jump in headfirst to help others in need by utilizing the guidance offered by the Catholic Church.“I believe very deeply that the Catholic Church has the keys to real human flourishing,” she said. “So I knew I wanted to become a mental health professional with those guardrails in place, because I benefited so much from Catholic counseling.”“I want to turn back around and help the next woman or couple or … anyone in line that needs to hear the good news, coupled with solid mental health formation. Like St. Thomas Aquinas says, ‘faith and reason.’ We need both.”With her “perinatal mental health training,” Helsel hopes to primarily work in the womenʼs health category “to support other women, pregnant women, postpartum women,” she said. “And obviously I have a love for people who may have lost a child in a particular way.”Helsel is interested in helping those discerning vocations, as her oldest son plans to apply to the priesthood. She is also hoping to support the vocation of marriage as it is “under a particular attack at this time.”To accomplish all of this, Helsel has already started her own private practice called Concordia Counseling.“I chose Concordia because Mary Catherine had a congenital heart condition,” she said. “Concordia means heart to heart or to bring two hearts into harmony. I wanted to honor my baby in heaven and Our Lord with my work. And so I started Concordia Counseling.”“Iʼm just getting it started. I have a caseload of about 10 clients, but Iʼm hoping to accept more,“ Helsel said. ”I know that the work I want to do most of all involves not just mental health but the teachings of the Catholic Church.”“I just think the framework needs to be formed properly, and that is the Catholic understanding of the whole person. And from there we can jump off anywhere,” she said.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/after-stillbirth-loss-mother-of-7-returns-to-school-to-help-others-heal-catholic-after-experiencing-an-unimaginable-loss-kelly-helsel-felt-called-to-begin-a-new-chapter-following-17-years-as-a-sta-scaled.jpg)
After navigating loss and grief, Kelly Helsel is officially now a licensed counselor thanks to the guidance given to her by the Catholic Church and her desire to use her experience to help others.
At the Regina Caeli, the pope also thanked the Canary Islands for welcoming a cruise ship with passengers sick with hantavirus.
![‘Love is stronger’: How a Catholic woman saved tens of thousands of orphans - #Catholic - In a chapel in Burundi in 1993, after she saw 72 of her friends, family, and colleagues executed, Marguerite Barankitse told God she no longer believed he was love.“How could God create those killers?” she recalled asking through her tears.As mass killings and ethnic violence tore apart her home country after a coup, Barankitse fled with 25 children, both Hutu and Tutsi, to the safest place she could think of — a Catholic church.But her faith had been challenged.“I felt broken,” she told EWTN News. “After witnessing continued massacres and the deaths of my friends and family, I lost my voice and spirit.”“[I] told God I no longer believed he was love because I could not understand how he could have created such hatred and killers,” she said.Then, she heard the voice of a little girl — one of the first children she had rescued.“We’re still in life,” little Chloe said. “We are here.”“In this moment, I was reminded and saw that God is love,” Barankitse said.She prayed for the strength “to go and shine in his glory.”“I knew God had not abandoned me,” she said.This wasn’t the only moment that shook Barankitse’s faith to her core. She would see more violence and death over the years. But it would become a defining moment for her.Beginning with the 25 children she saved, Barankitse would go on to rescue and raise tens of thousands of children, eventually formally creating an organization called Maison Shalom.Maison Shalom didn’t just provide for the children’s practical needs like shelter, education, and healthcare. Barankitse wanted to teach them to love and forgive, across ethnic barriers.It was the children who came up with the name.“We took the name ‘Shalom’ because my children heard on the radio that shalom meant peace, and that is our dream,” she explained.
Marguerite Barankitse with kids in the École Sainte Anne de Kigali program in Rwanda in 2023. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Maison Shalom
“From the beginning, Maison Shalom was more than a shelter — it was a community where every child could belong, regardless of ethnicity,” she said.Barankitse had seen firsthand the destruction of hate, and she wanted to break the cycle.“Hate destroys not only its victims but also those who carry it,” she said.“It is not entire ethnic groups that hate each other; it is individuals who choose hatred,” she said. “I refused to make that choice.”“I asked myself, what could I do to raise children who would break this cycle?” Barankitse continued. “My answer was to raise children with compassion, forgiveness, and love.”“My strategy has always been to love, because love is creative and transformative,” she said. “Through this love, I choose to respond to violence with compassion, protection, and reconciliation.”“Love made me an inventor, and I sought to build a community infused with compassion.”“Forgiveness, as taught by the Church, is radical — it asks us to break the cycle of vengeance and hatred, even when it seems justified,” Barankitse said.“Love is not just a feeling; it is a force that builds futures out of the rubble of war,” she said.“And I know that I can never give up because the children I help give me the strength and courage to always stand up, their resilience inspiring me every day,” Barankitse said.Walking through war zonesBarankitse would walk through war zones to save orphans — even those other people thought weren’t worth saving.“As the brutal violence and killings continued, I fought for the safety of these children,” she said. “More and more children continued to find refuge with me.”“I walked directly into war zones and picked children out amid piles of dead bodies because these children deserved the opportunity to live, be treated with dignity, and build peace,” she said.Barankitse fought for those who other people thought weren’t worth saving.“One day, I came across a mother who had been killed in a grenade attack with her 4-month-old baby strapped to her back,” she recalled. “The baby was severely injured and people told me to leave him, but I knew I could not give up.”“I chose to protect him and find medical help for him,” Barankitse said.In spite of his injuries, the 4-month-old baby would live.“I am proud to say that he survived and has grown up into a successful young man,” Barankitse said.Baranktise still remembers another harrowing moment when she had to fight to get medical help for a child who was injured with a deep gash in her neck.She took her to the airport to bring her to a hospital that could treat her — but other passengers “were refusing to let me aboard due to her condition,” she said.“They were afraid,” Barankitse said. “I said, ‘No, you have no compassion. You will help me.’”“Eventually, they listened to me and let me on the plane, putting a curtain between myself and the child and the other passengers,” Barankitse said.The little girl survived. Now she is married with two children of her own.“Sometimes love means standing strong for those who need help,” Barankitse said. “Nobody can stop love, and it remains my way of remaining strong against violence and hatred to this day.”Barankitse had another “deep spiritual crisis” in 1996 after another wave of killings in which she witnessed the death of one of her best friends.“I spent a month in prayer and returned humbled, realizing I am just a small instrument in God’s hands,” she said. “That is why I continue to pray to God to give me enough strength to continue doing his work.”“Faith does not shield you from suffering; it walks with you through it,” she said.“My strength comes from my faith and from the children themselves,” Barankitse said.“Even as a child, I was troubled by violence and dreamed of becoming a teacher to change the world by teaching children compassion and love,” she said. “Throughout my childhood, my mother taught me that God is love, and when we are created, he gives us strength.”Faith amid violenceEven after being forced out of her home nation in 2015 due to threats of violence, Barankitse has continued her work, relying on her faith to motivate her.She left Burundi for Rwanda, where she created Oasis of Peace, which served more than 70,000 Burundian refugees.“My faith taught me that we are created in love and that God gives us enough strength — ‘Do not be afraid, I will be with you until the end of the world,’” Barankitse said. “That is where I found my smile and my joy, even in the darkest moments.”Barankitse’s work is founded in her Catholic faith.“Being Christian is not just about going to church and praying; it is about restoring dignity to every human being,” Barankitse said.“You can give someone food or clothes, but if they have no dignity, they have nothing,” Barankitse said. “By showing my love to the people around me, I seek to give back dignity to all — deciding to see the humanity in everyone, even those who have hurt you most.”
Marguerite Barankitse at the Human Rights and Humanitarian Forum in Los Angeles in 2025. | Credit: Aurora Humanitarian Initiative
“This is how I build a future where no child has to suffer as my family and friends did,” she said. “Hate will never have the last word. Not as long as we practice love.”“Catholic teaching tells us that every person is made in the image of God and deserves reverence and love,” she said. “This belief is a foundation for all of my work.”Oasis of Peace offers counseling for victims of torture and rape, as well as education, vocational training, and micro-financing “so families can rebuild their lives with dignity,” Barankitse said. Oasis of Peace also provides education for children. The recently launched École Sainte-Anne de Kigali initiative helps in “bringing together children from both underprivileged and more privileged backgrounds in a shared space of learning, growth, and dignity,” according to Barankitse.“When I see a child orphaned by violence, I see a child of God. When I meet a woman who has survived rape, I see a person of infinite worth,” Barankitse said. “I believe in celebrating differences because this reminds us of how we are all created uniquely. We all deserve to feel love, compassion, and dignity.”Barankitse continues her work every day, expanding Oasis of Peace, and speaking internationally about her story and the needs of the people she helps.“Every day is full and purposeful,” she said.“My hope is to continue sharing my story and the stories of Mason Shalom, inspiring others by showing them the power of love. My days are spent listening, organizing, and dreaming with those I serve.”Barankitse won the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, which provided her with funding to help more refugee children.
Marguerite Barankitse at the 2025 Aurora Prize Ceremony in Ellis Island, New York, on Nov. 6, 2025. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Aurora Humanitarian Initiative
“My dream is to create Shalom Houses everywhere, so every person knows they belong,” she said.When asked what message she wanted to share, Barankitse said: “Do not give up.”“The world can show you things that make you want to despair — I have seen them,” she said. “I have been forced to watch friends be murdered, held mutilated children, and fled my country as a refugee. Yet I still believe love is stronger."To support or learn more about Barankitseʼs work, visit https://maisonshalom.org/.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/love-is-stronger-how-a-catholic-woman-saved-tens-of-thousands-of-orphans-catholic-in-a-chapel-in-burundi-in-1993-after-she-saw-72-of-her-friends-family-and-colleagues-execut.jpg)
Out of the horrors of the Burundian Civil War and the Rwandan genocide emerged a woman willing to risk her life for peace.
![How Christ transformed 2 young converts from Islam - #Catholic - For Jonás’ family, who are Muslim, turning away from Islam constitutes a grave betrayal of their culture and roots. Despite this, following a long journey of searching and formation, the young man received the sacrament of baptism during the Easter Vigil at the cathedral in Getafe, the Spanish city where he has lived since he was barely a year old.His decision came after a personal encounter with Christ, when he realized there was no turning back: He was firmly convinced that the Catholic faith was the true one.The 25-year-old, who did not share his last name, first became interested in the Catholic faith during his school years, while studying authors such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo.For over five years, until beginning his catechumenate in 2025, the young man reflected deeply upon and researched various religious traditions. In an interview with ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News, Jonás recalled that it was during the process of researching Islam that "I ended up becoming a Christian.”Transformed livesFor Jonás, the person of Christ and the sacraments were what transformed his life. “If Christ doesn’t enter into your heart, Christ who is God made man, who gave himself up for us on the cross, then ultimately you are not a Christian, but merely someone who knows a lot about Christianity,” he said. In his case, what impacted him most were Christ’s passion and self-sacrifice on the cross, as well as Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.On the same day as Jonás, Lourdes Ángel also received the sacrament of baptism. Like Jonás, she grew up in a Muslim family. However, she explained to ACI Prensa that she always felt it was abundantly clear “that Christ was present in my life; even though no one had ever spoken to me about him, I already felt his presence very deeply.”“My mother always tried to instill the Muslim religion in me, but I always gravitated toward Christianity. It was as if my heart were already in another place, without having any formation” in the Catholic faith, the 21-year-old recalled.She shared that God helped her escape a toxic relationship at the age of 19 and that it was then that she met her current boyfriend, who is involved with the Neocatechumenal Way. “I realized that God was calling me, and I wasn’t going to close the door on him or turn my back on him,” she recounted.What struck her most about the Catholics she knew was seeing “that people were so happy. They follow God and are happy even when things go badly for them, even when they have problems from time to time. It’s as if they see something good in suffering and know that Christ has a better plan for them. I wanted that; I wanted to understand how they could be so happy.”Breaking the parameters of their worldThe journey both of them took to embrace the Catholic faith wasnʼt easy. “Leaving your initial faith,” Jonás explained, “is quite difficult, because ultimately it structures your life and [converting] entails breaking with the established framework of your world.”What he found most difficult was conveying this decision to his family: “I don’t think they will ever understand it ... they simply cannot wrap their heads around the idea that someone could change something like that. To them, it’s like a kind of identity or culture more than a path that one must seek out and discover.”Even so, Jonás said that Jesus Christ is the one who helps him keep going, the one who comforts him and gives him the necessary strength to persevere. “Even Jesus himself warns us that the world will not particularly love us ... if they did it to him, they’ll do it to us.”For Lourdes, the most difficult part was leaving behind her former way of life and attempting to “fit God in without changing anything about myself.” She specifically recalled a lesson taught to her by her catechist: “You cannot bring God into your life without doing anything for him; you have to make room for him, and then you can worry about everything else.”
The group of new catechumens during the Easter Vigil in Getafe, Spain. | Credit: Diocese of Getafe
A new rebirthJonás cherishes a fond memory of the Easter Vigil, when he received the sacraments of Christian initiation alongside 47 other adults. “It was a very happy experience. The next day, I felt completed,” he recalled.He said that, before receiving baptism, “I felt a rather large void in my life, one I tried to fill with various ideologies ... the truth is that I was living in a state of considerable internal disorder within my soul, within my spirit.”“After accepting Jesus into my heart,” Jonás continued, “I believe I am a much more ordered person in the moral aspect. Now I view others not merely as instruments but truly as creations of God made in God’s image and that makes me feel complete; it’s been like being reborn.”He also shared that he tries to go to Mass every day. “For me, the Eucharist is like a spiritual treasure, what recharges me with spiritual strength. The body of Christ gives us grace and the capacity to view the world in a supernatural way, not merely through human eyes, but to also see it somewhat like Jesus would,” he said.Accompaniment and faith in communityOn this journey of conversion, he said he is especially grateful for the guidance of his catechist as well as that of the parish priest and his fellow parishioners. He also highlighted the importance of living out one’s faith with the support of others and within a community, for as he pointed out, “in isolation, people succumb; they grow weak.”Along these same lines, Lourdes emphasized that “forming yourself alone” is not the same as having the assistance of a catechist: “You are much more conscious of what you are receiving and of what you are going to do at Easter,” she emphasized.Lourdes also recalled her baptism “with great joy.” Ultimately, she noted, “you receive Christ himself, something truly astonishing,” just as the realization “that God loved me despite everything I had done. He was there waiting for me, and I am very happy to have received him.”Jonás encouraged those going through a similar situation not to give up, pointing out that the process of conversion “does not happen over a single weekend.”“Don’t give up,“ he said. ”Ultimately, as Jesus said, a Christian is not accepted in his own home, nor in his own family. I would tell them to persevere, to draw strength from the words of Jesus in the Gospel, to come to know him, to continue inquiring and discerning, and to seek out people who share their beliefs and can help them.”This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/how-christ-transformed-2-young-converts-from-islam-catholic-for-jonas-family-who-are-muslim-turning-away-from-islam-constitutes-a-grave-betrayal-of-their-culture-and-roots-despite-thi.webp)
The converts describe their journey to faith in Jesus Christ, their experience of receiving the sacraments at the Easter Vigil, and the importance of their catechists and Christian community.
