The man in the trenchcoat stood in the ruined church, gazing down at a fallen crucifix, its life-sized image of Jesus broken, bashed and half-covered in rubble.
Nearby, a statue of the Virgin Mary, somehow still erect after intense bombing, looked down with the man, her eyes seemingly full of sorrow.
For Mark Knutson, securing the necessary signatures this summer to get one of the country’s strictest gun control measures on the Oregon midterm ballot was an accomplishment on its own. Now, he and other proponents are declaring it a historic victory.
“We are celebrating a victory for our children and youth and high school students,” said Knutson, a chief petitioner of the gun safety initiative and senior pastor of Augustana Lutheran Church in Portland.
As the Supreme Court heard the case of Brackeen v. Haaland on November 9, what was at stake for most interested parties was the decades-old Indian Child Welfare Act, considered by many to be the “gold standard” of child welfare policy.
Former Vatican financial auditor Libero Milone filed suit on November 4 against the Vatican Secretariat of State, demanding the Catholic Church pay for damages to his reputation that he alleges followed his unceremonious firing in 2017.
At a meeting on November 8 arranged by his lawyer, Milone told reporters that Cardinal Angelo Becciu, once the third-highest-ranking official at the Vatican, was “the mastermind of the so-called operation eject-Milone.”
In an advertisement unveiled November 4 on the Twitter feed of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ wife, Casey, black-and-white images of DeSantis and his family fade in and out as a narrator declares that “on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a protector.’ So God made a fighter.”
Republican Senatorial candidate Mehmet Oz faces an uphill battle as he closes on Democratic rival John Fetterman for the title of next senator of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Yet, Oz’s surprise victory in the Republican primary and his strong showing in the campaign also signal a subtle political shift—many Muslim Americans are increasingly voting Republican.