principal – United Yam

Texas private school bans social media, sees students thrive with parent support #Catholic

Faustina Academy, a K–12 private school in Irving, Texas, bans social media use among its students, and parents have been totally supportive. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Faustina Academy

CNA Staff, Oct 30, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
As the harmful effects of smartphone use on children become more well known, one school in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is partnering with parents to enforce a no-social-media policy and witnessing students flourish as a result.Faustina Academy, a K–12 private, independent Catholic school in Irving, Texas, asks parents to formally commit to a school policy of keeping their kids socia-media-free while enrolled. In addition to asking families to commit to prohibiting TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and CapCut, Faustina students have never been permitted to have phones with them during school hours. Student drivers must leave their phones in their cars during the school day and younger high school students who need phones for after-school activities turn them in to the office in the morning and pick them up after school and can only take them out once they are off campus.In the school’s early days, years before the smartphone’s launch, Christina Mehaffey, principal since the school’s founding in 2003, told CNA she paid attention to technology trends, researching MySpace and other early social-networking sites available on desktop or laptop computers.She concluded the sites “opened doors to inappropriate material” such as pornography and violence and “tweaked the tech policy to be more restrictive” over the years by informally asking parents to keep their children off devices at home (they were never allowed to have phones during the school day). She also asked parents to limit their children’s video game time.In 2017, after seeing the effects of years of smartphone use and social media apps on the children, Mehaffey began asking parents to prohibit social media use among students. She held two weeks of mandatory parent meetings for every grade level, discussing the harms of popular smartphone apps that were “drawing kids away from reality” and exposing them to “horrifying” content that was “right at their fingertips.” Mehaffey brought in an IT expert to explain to both parents and students that the app and smartphone creators “intentionally” made the devices and apps addictive because “they knew kids don’t have self-control; all for the sake of making money.”The expert told parents that kids could easily access content so harmful it was “far beyond what anyone could even imagine,” Mehaffey said. “Parents were amazed” at what they learned, she said, and 100% were willing to verbally commit to keeping their children off social media. Mehaffey said it was necessary that every parent “get on board” in order to address the “collective action problem, the fear of missing out” that would be present among the students if every family did not have the same policy at home.Speaking of the overwhelming support of the parents, Mehaffey told CNA that many parents even “asked me to just make a school-wide policy prohibiting social media so they would be relieved of the burden of having to enforce the rules. A few parents said: ‘Our lives will be easier if the school makes it a policy.’”So, in 2022, the school’s official policy became “no social media use by Faustina students.” “Every single parent signed on,” Mehaffey said. Heidi Maher, whose family has been at Faustina since 2020, told CNA her family already had a no-social-media policy, but when Mehaffey took the no-phone policy in school a step further and banned social media, “it was a huge blessing to me as a parent. It took that battle off the table. We have enough battles as parents. If no one else has social media, I don’t have to battle with my children.” At previous schools her children attended, Maher said “they weren’t willing to lay down the law on more controversial social issues and they weren’t being direct enough about what being Catholic means.”Faustina Academy students attended the March for Life in Washington, D.C., in 2022 and plan to go again this coming January. Credit: Photo courtesy of Faustina Academy“Kids are catechized on the playground,” Maher said. “Their peers, and what their peers’ families are doing, affect them, regardless of what their teachers say.”“My kids have grown up in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in Dallas. But when it came to education, we wanted an orthodox Catholic school,” she said.Since the policy change, Maher said she now sees a level of innocence in her children and their friends that she has not seen in a long time.The Dominicans visit the school once a week to read, answer questions, or give a talk to the students at Faustina Academy. Credit: Photo courtesy of Faustina AcademyJane Petres, who has two daughters at the school, agreed, telling CNA she appreciates raising her family among “mostly like-minded families” and school staff whom she can trust.“The other parents here seem very ‘with it’ and proactive,” she said of Faustina. “You can ban everything in the world, but unless the parents are enforcing it, kids are still going to be exposed to harmful things.”She said that at a previous school, an eighth-grade girl became involved with a 45-year-old man (who she thought was a teenage boy) through social media, and rather than recognizing the dangers and changing their policies, the school hushed it up. Every year, Faustina hosts parent orientations where Mehaffey tells them that “our purpose on earth is to get people to heaven. It has to be in everything we do; in our choices, friendships, our technology use, everything.”Faustina students attend Mass. Credit: Photo courtesy of Faustina Academy“We want a school where everyone is on the same page, but we’re open to all,” Mehaffey said. “If someone comes in who isn’t Catholic, they have to commit to doing things the way the school does. Not only the technology policy but also prayers, the Mass, all of it. We’re going to teach the truth.”

unitedyam October 30, 2025

Faustina Academy, a K–12 private school in Irving, Texas, bans social media use among its students, and parents have been totally supportive. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Faustina Academy

CNA Staff, Oct 30, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

As the harmful effects of smartphone use on children become more well known, one school in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is partnering with parents to enforce a no-social-media policy and witnessing students flourish as a result.

Faustina Academy, a K–12 private, independent Catholic school in Irving, Texas, asks parents to formally commit to a school policy of keeping their kids socia-media-free while enrolled.

In addition to asking families to commit to prohibiting TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and CapCut, Faustina students have never been permitted to have phones with them during school hours.

Student drivers must leave their phones in their cars during the school day and younger high school students who need phones for after-school activities turn them in to the office in the morning and pick them up after school and can only take them out once they are off campus.

In the school’s early days, years before the smartphone’s launch, Christina Mehaffey, principal since the school’s founding in 2003, told CNA she paid attention to technology trends, researching MySpace and other early social-networking sites available on desktop or laptop computers.

She concluded the sites “opened doors to inappropriate material” such as pornography and violence and “tweaked the tech policy to be more restrictive” over the years by informally asking parents to keep their children off devices at home (they were never allowed to have phones during the school day). She also asked parents to limit their children’s video game time.

In 2017, after seeing the effects of years of smartphone use and social media apps on the children, Mehaffey began asking parents to prohibit social media use among students.

She held two weeks of mandatory parent meetings for every grade level, discussing the harms of popular smartphone apps that were “drawing kids away from reality” and exposing them to “horrifying” content that was “right at their fingertips.”

Mehaffey brought in an IT expert to explain to both parents and students that the app and smartphone creators “intentionally” made the devices and apps addictive because “they knew kids don’t have self-control; all for the sake of making money.”

The expert told parents that kids could easily access content so harmful it was “far beyond what anyone could even imagine,” Mehaffey said.

“Parents were amazed” at what they learned, she said, and 100% were willing to verbally commit to keeping their children off social media.

Mehaffey said it was necessary that every parent “get on board” in order to address the “collective action problem, the fear of missing out” that would be present among the students if every family did not have the same policy at home.

Speaking of the overwhelming support of the parents, Mehaffey told CNA that many parents even “asked me to just make a school-wide policy prohibiting social media so they would be relieved of the burden of having to enforce the rules. A few parents said: ‘Our lives will be easier if the school makes it a policy.’”

So, in 2022, the school’s official policy became “no social media use by Faustina students.”

“Every single parent signed on,” Mehaffey said.

Heidi Maher, whose family has been at Faustina since 2020, told CNA her family already had a no-social-media policy, but when Mehaffey took the no-phone policy in school a step further and banned social media, “it was a huge blessing to me as a parent. It took that battle off the table. We have enough battles as parents. If no one else has social media, I don’t have to battle with my children.”

At previous schools her children attended, Maher said “they weren’t willing to lay down the law on more controversial social issues and they weren’t being direct enough about what being Catholic means.”

Faustina Academy students attended the March for Life in Washington, D.C., in 2022 and plan to go again this coming January. Credit: Photo courtesy of Faustina Academy

“Kids are catechized on the playground,” Maher said. “Their peers, and what their peers’ families are doing, affect them, regardless of what their teachers say.”

“My kids have grown up in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in Dallas. But when it came to education, we wanted an orthodox Catholic school,” she said.

Since the policy change, Maher said she now sees a level of innocence in her children and their friends that she has not seen in a long time.

The Dominicans visit the school once a week to read, answer questions, or give a talk to the students at Faustina Academy. Credit: Photo courtesy of Faustina Academy

Jane Petres, who has two daughters at the school, agreed, telling CNA she appreciates raising her family among “mostly like-minded families” and school staff whom she can trust.

“The other parents here seem very ‘with it’ and proactive,” she said of Faustina. “You can ban everything in the world, but unless the parents are enforcing it, kids are still going to be exposed to harmful things.”

She said that at a previous school, an eighth-grade girl became involved with a 45-year-old man (who she thought was a teenage boy) through social media, and rather than recognizing the dangers and changing their policies, the school hushed it up.

Every year, Faustina hosts parent orientations where Mehaffey tells them that “our purpose on earth is to get people to heaven. It has to be in everything we do; in our choices, friendships, our technology use, everything.”

Faustina students attend Mass. Credit: Photo courtesy of Faustina Academy

“We want a school where everyone is on the same page, but we’re open to all,” Mehaffey said. “If someone comes in who isn’t Catholic, they have to commit to doing things the way the school does. Not only the technology policy but also prayers, the Mass, all of it. We’re going to teach the truth.”

Judge rules against saints’ statues on Massachusetts government building #Catholic

Statues of St. Florian (at left) and St. Michael the Archangel (at right) are currently barred from appearing on the planned public safety building of Quincy, Massachusetts. / Credit: Courtesy of Office of Mayor Thomas Koch

Boston, Massachusetts, Oct 16, 2025 / 12:18 pm (CNA).
A Massachusetts trial court judge has issued an order blocking the installation of statues of two Catholic saints on a new public safety building in the city of Quincy, setting up a likely appeal that may determine how the state treats separation of church and state disputes going forward.The 10-foot-high bronze statues of St. Michael the Archangel and St. Florian, which were scheduled to be installed on the building’s façade this month, will instead await a higher court’s decision.The statues cost an estimated $850,000, part of the new, $175 million public safety building that will serve as police headquarters and administration offices for the Boston suburb’s fire department.Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch, a practicing Catholic, has said he chose St. Michael the Archangel because he is the patron of police officers and St. Florian because he is the patron of firefighters, not to send a message about religion.But the judge said the statues can’t be separated from the saints’ Catholic connections.“The complaint here plausibly alleges that the statues at issue convey a message endorsing one religion over others,” Norfolk County Superior Court Judge William Sullivan wrote in a 26-page ruling Oct. 14.The judge noted that the statues “represent two Catholic saints.”“The statues, particularly when considered together, patently endorse Catholic beliefs,” the judge wrote.The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit challenging the statues — 15 city residents represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts — have amassed facts that “plausibly suggest that an objective observer would view these statues on the façade of the public safety building as primarily endorsing Catholicism/Christianity and conveying a distinctly religious message,” the judge wrote.Rachel Davidson, staff attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts, who argued the case during a lengthy court hearing on Sept. 19, praised the judge’s decision.“This ruling affirms the bedrock principle that our government cannot favor one religion above others, or religious beliefs over nonreligious beliefs,” Davidson said in a written statement. “We are grateful to the court for acknowledging the immediate harm that the installation of these statues would cause and for ensuring that Quincy residents can continue to make their case for the proper separation of church and state, as the Massachusetts Constitution requires.”The mayor said the city will appeal.“We chose the statues of Michael and Florian to honor Quincy’s first responders, not to promote any religion,” Koch said in a written statement provided to the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, by a spokesman. “These figures are recognized symbols of courage and sacrifice in police and fire communities across the world. We will appeal this ruling so our city can continue to celebrate and inspire the men and women who protect us.” The lawsuit, which was filed May 27 in Norfolk County Superior Court in Dedham, relies on the Massachusetts Constitution, not the U.S. Constitution, but there is a tie-in.In 1979, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court adopted the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1971 three-pronged “Lemon test” when considering church and state cases — whether a law concerning religion has “a secular legislative purpose,” whether “its principal or primary effect … neither advances [n]or inhibits religion,” and whether it fosters “excessive entanglement between government and religion.” The state’s highest court also added a fourth standard — whether a “challenged practice” has “divisive political potential.”But in June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ditched the Lemon test in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, a case involving prayers offered by a high school football coach in Washington state.If the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which is the ultimate interpreter of state law, takes the Quincy statues dispute, it would be the first time the court has considered a case on point since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Kennedy decision.This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.

unitedyam October 16, 2025

Statues of St. Florian (at left) and St. Michael the Archangel (at right) are currently barred from appearing on the planned public safety building of Quincy, Massachusetts. / Credit: Courtesy of Office of Mayor Thomas Koch

Boston, Massachusetts, Oct 16, 2025 / 12:18 pm (CNA).

A Massachusetts trial court judge has issued an order blocking the installation of statues of two Catholic saints on a new public safety building in the city of Quincy, setting up a likely appeal that may determine how the state treats separation of church and state disputes going forward.

The 10-foot-high bronze statues of St. Michael the Archangel and St. Florian, which were scheduled to be installed on the building’s façade this month, will instead await a higher court’s decision.

The statues cost an estimated $850,000, part of the new, $175 million public safety building that will serve as police headquarters and administration offices for the Boston suburb’s fire department.

Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch, a practicing Catholic, has said he chose St. Michael the Archangel because he is the patron of police officers and St. Florian because he is the patron of firefighters, not to send a message about religion.

But the judge said the statues can’t be separated from the saints’ Catholic connections.

“The complaint here plausibly alleges that the statues at issue convey a message endorsing one religion over others,” Norfolk County Superior Court Judge William Sullivan wrote in a 26-page ruling Oct. 14.

The judge noted that the statues “represent two Catholic saints.”

“The statues, particularly when considered together, patently endorse Catholic beliefs,” the judge wrote.

The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit challenging the statues — 15 city residents represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts — have amassed facts that “plausibly suggest that an objective observer would view these statues on the façade of the public safety building as primarily endorsing Catholicism/Christianity and conveying a distinctly religious message,” the judge wrote.

Rachel Davidson, staff attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts, who argued the case during a lengthy court hearing on Sept. 19, praised the judge’s decision.

“This ruling affirms the bedrock principle that our government cannot favor one religion above others, or religious beliefs over nonreligious beliefs,” Davidson said in a written statement. “We are grateful to the court for acknowledging the immediate harm that the installation of these statues would cause and for ensuring that Quincy residents can continue to make their case for the proper separation of church and state, as the Massachusetts Constitution requires.”

The mayor said the city will appeal.

“We chose the statues of Michael and Florian to honor Quincy’s first responders, not to promote any religion,” Koch said in a written statement provided to the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, by a spokesman. “These figures are recognized symbols of courage and sacrifice in police and fire communities across the world. We will appeal this ruling so our city can continue to celebrate and inspire the men and women who protect us.” The lawsuit, which was filed May 27 in Norfolk County Superior Court in Dedham, relies on the Massachusetts Constitution, not the U.S. Constitution, but there is a tie-in.

In 1979, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court adopted the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1971 three-pronged “Lemon test” when considering church and state cases — whether a law concerning religion has “a secular legislative purpose,” whether “its principal or primary effect … neither advances [n]or inhibits religion,” and whether it fosters “excessive entanglement between government and religion.”

The state’s highest court also added a fourth standard — whether a “challenged practice” has “divisive political potential.”

But in June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ditched the Lemon test in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, a case involving prayers offered by a high school football coach in Washington state.

If the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which is the ultimate interpreter of state law, takes the Quincy statues dispute, it would be the first time the court has considered a case on point since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Kennedy decision.

This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and has been adapted by CNA.

Religious Liberty Commission hears from teachers, coaches, school leaders

unitedyam September 29, 2025

President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission meets on Sept. 29, 2025, in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Tessa Gervasini/CNA

Washington, D.C., Sep 29, 2025 / 19:13 pm (CNA).

Teachers, coaches, and other public and private school leaders said their religious liberty was threatened in American schools at a hearing conducted by President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission on Sept. 29.

Speakers said there must be a fight for schools to bring back the “truth” to protect students and religious liberty. Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach; Monica Gill, a high school teacher; Marisol Arroyo-Castro, a seventh grade teacher; and Keisha Russell, a lawyer for First Liberty Institute, addressed the commission led by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

“There has to be a call to action,” commission member Dr. Phil McGraw said. “The most common way to lose power is to think you don’t have it to begin with. We do have power, and we need to rally with that power.”

Teachers and coaches describe experiences

Kennedy said he was suspended — and later fired — from his position as a football coach at Bremerton High School in Washington for praying a brief and quiet prayer after football games.

“After the game, I took a knee to say thanks,” Kennedy explained. “That’s all. If that could be turned into a national controversy, it says more about the confusion in our country than the conduct of the person performing it.”

Kennedy told the commission the law is “cloudy and muddy” and they “have the power to clarify it.” Kennedy also said some lawyers “need to be held accountable” for actions taken in religious liberty cases.

Kennedy said: “I don’t know a lot about law and liberty, but I know that you’re supposed to advise people on the truth and the facts, and they’re not. They have an agenda, and their agenda is well set and in place and is working very well, keeping prayer out of the public square. They’re still doing it. That needs to be exposed.”

“Being a teacher has been one of the greatest blessings of my life,” Gill said to the committee. “God really gave my heart a mission … to show all of my students every day that they are loved. No matter what they’re going through, no matter what their grades are, no matter what their status is with their peers, I love them.”

“But in the summer of 2021 … Loudoun County Public Schools adopted a policy that forced teachers to deny the foundational truth of what it means to be human, created as male and female,” Gill said.

“This policy forced teachers to affirm all transgender students,” Gill said. “My employer gave teachers a choice: deny truth or risk everything … I knew that I could not stand in front of my Father in heaven one day and say: ‘My pension plan was more important than your truth.’ I also knew that if I say that I love my students, the only right choice would be to stand in love and truth for them.”

To combat the policy, Gill joined a lawsuit by Alliance Defending Freedom after a fellow Virginia teacher was fired for speaking out against the same policy. The lawsuit “resulted in victory for all teachers to freely speak truth and love when Loudoun County finally agreed not to require teachers to use pronouns in accordance with the student’s sex,” Gill said.

Arroyo-Castro testified that she was punished for displaying a cross in her private workspace in her seventh grade classroom in a New Britain School District school in Connecticut.

“I share this with you to help you understand why the crucifix is so significant to me and why I will never hide it from anyone’s view,” Arroyo-Castro said. “The vice principal told me that the crucifix was of a religious nature, so against the Constitution of the United States, and that it had to be taken down by the end of the day.”

If she did not take it down it would be considered “insubordination and could lead to termination,” Arroyo-Castro said. She asked if she could have time to pray on it, and was told she could, but “it wouldn’t change anything.”

“I was later called to a meeting with the district chief of staff, the principal, the vice principal, [and a] union representative. The chief of staff suggested that I put the crucifix in a drawer. I knew I couldn’t do that since my grandmother has instilled in me the meaning of the crucifix and how it should be treated with respect. But the chief of staff said that the Constitution says that I had to take it down,” Arroyo-Castro said.

After she refused to remove it, Arroyo-Castro was released from school with an unpaid suspension. She was offered legal defense by lawyers at First Liberty, which sued the school for violating the Constitution. While the lawsuit is ongoing she works in the administrative building “far from the students.”

Arroyo-Castro said: “Every day, I wonder how they’re doing.”

“Please do what you can to educate the districts in American schools about the true meaning of the establishment clause and the free exercise clause,” Arroyo-Castro advised the commission members. “How can we do our jobs well when many education leaders today don’t understand the Constitution themselves? We must understand as Americans that freedom of religion is a right that benefits all Americans.”

Suggestions from faith leaders

Leaders at Jewish, Catholic, and Christian schools also recounted religious freedom issues facing faith-based schools across the nation and what the country can do.

The leaders highlighted the need to protect the financial aid faith-based institutions receive and stop any threats of losing money if certain values are not enforced. Todd J. Williams, provost at Cairn University, said: “Schools will begin to cave because they’re worried about the millions of dollars that will go out the door.”

Father Robert Sirico, a priest at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said he was recently affected by a decision by the Michigan Supreme Court that redefined sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

“While presented as a matter of fairness, this reinterpretation proposes grave dangers, grave risks for all religious institutions, even those like Sacred Heart that receive absolutely no public support,” he said.

Sacred Heart has filed a lawsuit to combat the issue, but Sirico said what needs to be done “exceeds the competency of [the] commission and the competency of this administration.”

“We have to think of this in existential terms, and we have to come at this project with the understanding that this is going to take years to transform. This is why religious people can transform the world: We believe in something that’s greater than our politics. We can reenvision.”

Monumental censer at Christendom College chapel represents ‘grandeur of Christ the King’

unitedyam September 28, 2025

“Now people need not go as far away as Spain to see this beautiful thing,” said Christendom College President Emeritus Timothy O’Donnell of the school chapel’s monumental thurible. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Christendom College

Ann Arbor, Michigan, Sep 28, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

A tradition dating from the 11th century has been brought to Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, extending an enduring symbol of faith and pilgrimage. A jumbo-sized thurible, commissioned by the college and made in Spain, now embellishes the college’s Christ the King chapel.

The connections between Christendom College and the Catholic culture of Spain date back to even before the college’s founding in 1977. Its first president and co-founder, Warren Carroll, took students to Spain on several visits to learn Spain’s history and experience life at El Escorial monastery near Madrid.

Among other works, Carroll, a historian, authored “Isabel of Spain: The Catholic Queen” and “The Last Crusade: Spain 1936” with an interest in defending Catholic faith and culture, said Timothy O’Donnell, the college’s president emeritus, in an interview with CNA.

Drone shot of Christendom College’s Christ the King Chapel in Front Royal, Virginia. Credit: Photo courtesy of Christendom College

Believed to be one of the largest thuribles or censers in the world, the famed Botafumeiro is a giant thurible used at the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral in northern Spain, which has been a pilgrimage destination for centuries, rivaled only by Rome and Jerusalem.

According to tradition, it is the burial place of St. James the Greater, who evangelized the Iberian Peninsula. In a centuries-old tradition, the massive censer, which weighs hundreds of pounds, is swung from ropes when pulled by a team of eight men at the transept of the historic church on feast days. It weighs more than 176 pounds and is over 6 feet tall.

O’Donnell recalled that St. John Paul II said in a homily in 1982, as the first pilgrim pope to Santiago: “This place, so dear to Galicians and Spaniards alike, has in the past been a point of attraction and convergence for Europe and all of Christendom.”

According to O’Donnell: “I was so moved by that because that is the name of our college. So, on certain anniversaries, we would take pilgrimages to Santiago.”

Seeing the giant thurible there ultimately gave him the idea to reproduce such a symbol of faith. “I thought it would be awesome to have something like this in the new chapel.” He turned to Heritage Liturgical, which designed and realized the project.

Seeing the giant thurible at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela gave Timothy O'Donnell, speaking here at the chapel, the idea to reproduce such a symbol of faith in the college's chapel. Credit: Photo courtesy of Christendom College — Seeing the giant thurible at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela gave Timothy O’Donnell, speaking here at the chapel, the idea to reproduce such a symbol of faith in the college’s chapel. Credit: Photo courtesy of Christendom College

“Now people need not go as far away as Spain to see this beautiful thing and incense going up to heaven like the prayers of the faithful and angels going to God on high,” he said. In a tradition dating back to the Old Testament, costly incense was a sacrifice; after the coming of Christ, it joins our prayers with his perfect prayer and sacrifice.

Instead of producing an exact reproduction of the Botafumeiro in Spain, Heritage Liturgical executed a censer that echoes the design of the chapel. Enzo Selvaggi, principal and creative director of Heritage Liturgical, told CNA that Christendom’s monumental thurible was “designed in a cogent and well-defined Gothic Revival mode to fit the architecture of the college’s Chapel of Christ the King.”

Emilio León, a silversmith of Córdoba, Spain, was selected for the project and helped restore the original Botafumeiro. Starting in 2021, León sculpted and chiseled for a year and a half to complete the work, which is silver-plated brass.

In an email to CNA, León wrote: “I incorporated my spiritual and religious values, just as I do in all my work, giving my best effort, knowing that it is for the glory of God.” León belongs to a royal fraternity that preserves Catholic traditions such as Holy Week processions and the dignity of sacred spaces.

León is also working on other projects for Heritage Liturgical to be installed in the U.S. For Catholics in Spain, he continued, the Botafumeiro represents “the grandeur of Christ the King and the apostle James.”

On feast days of the Church, Christendom's thurible is brought near the central altar where it is hoisted on chains and swung by senior students. Credit: Courtesy of Christendom College — On feast days of the Church, Christendom’s thurible is brought near the central altar where it is hoisted on chains and swung by senior students. Credit: Courtesy of Christendom College

Christendom’s thurible is normally displayed near the image of the Virgin Mary in the chapel. On feast days of the Church, it is brought near the central altar where it is hoisted on chains and swung by senior students, much in the tradition of Spain. The next feast day for swinging the grand censer will be the solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, on Nov. 23.

Selvaggi told CNA that in works produced by Heritage Liturgical, the Catholic principle of sacramentality applies at their conception so that designers and artists use matter, as do theologians, to “make a spiritual reality encounterable in the world.”

Both Selvaggi and León are working on other projects destined for the U.S., including helping to restore churches in Nebraska and Georgia, and designing mosaics for churches in Wisconsin. The message from the company affirmed that the new thurible at Christendom College is “captivating not only because of its size and beauty, but more importantly, because it reveals something that already exists: the love of God that causes us to send our prayers rising up to God.”