Ash Wednesday

Many people looking at their February calendars are doing a double-take with Ash Wednesday falling on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day.

Almost half of adult Catholics, 45 percent, typically receive ashes — made from the burned and blessed palms of the previous year’s Palm Sunday — at Ash Wednesday services, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

The online posting of one’s ashes, often marked in the form of a cross on the forehead, thrills some people and disappoints others.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis marked the beginning of the church’s Lenten journey by sending off several hundred religious and diocesan priests on their own […]