Arts & Culture

In the charged silence before his performance at the 2025 Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Polish pianist Piotr Pawlak did something both simple and profound.

Jaime Cortez, who was born in New York and raised in El Salvador, has engaged in multicultural music ministry throughout his career, collaborating with peers on a number of projects — including “Gracia y Amor/Grace and Love,” a collection with Hurd and Eleazar Cortés, and “Our Common Home.”

The northwestern French city of Nantes waited for this moment for five long years and on Sept. 27, reopened its cathedral after the 2020 arson attack. The church celebrated with local and state officials present, and topped its reopening with ballet dancers flying on the cathedral’s square.

Over a century in the making, the Tower of Jesus Christ, designed by famed Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí, will soon crown the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, making it the tallest Catholic Church in the world.

Francesca LaRosa, who recently took home a Catholic Music Award for Best New Singer in Rome for her song “My Soul Proclaims,” made her own unique journey through the psalms that brought new life and a song honoring the joyful words of Mary in the “Magnificat.”