COMMENTARY: The annual event in a city thick with political maneuvering gathered people who had come not to posture, but to pray.
There is a particular kind of peace that settles over a room full of people who know, without apology, exactly who they are. I felt it the moment my daughter and I walked into the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning, the Solemnity of St. Joseph — a college freshman on spring break, and her mother, both of us invigorated by what the morning had in store for us.
Washington is loud with ambition and thick with maneuvering. But for a few hours on the feast of the man God chose to protect his own family, that ballroom was something else. It was a gathering of people who had come not to posture, but to pray.
Jonathan Roumie — the actor who portrays Jesus in The Chosen — led the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and the room went still. At one point, I leaned toward my daughter and whispered, “We are praying with Jesus!” Written down, it sounds sentimental. In the moment, it was simply true.
A statement from Pope Leo XIV was read by
