BRAINTREE -- In light of recent changes in Massachusetts abortion legislation, several pro-life organizations are planning to conduct a signature campaign to file an initiative petition for a law protecting infants born alive during abortion procedures.

When COVID-19 began shutting America down in March of 2020, Lowell's Franco-American Day Committee was busy planning its 50th Franco-American Festival, including a gala 50th-anniversary celebration and its annual French Mass and June 24 raising of Quebec's flag at Lowell City Hall. Those plans were all postponed as weeks went by, the pandemic worsened, and finally, the 2020 Franco Festival had to be canceled. The committee stopped meeting and waited with everyone else for the development of vaccines that would make even a minimal 2021 Festival possible.

On the way home from his psychiatric practice, Dr. John Masko used to stop at St. Mary's Abbey in Wrentham, Massachusetts, to buy chocolates that the nuns made -- and sometimes to attend Mass. On those visits to the Trappistine monastery in the 1990s, he discovered something that changed his understanding of living the faith: a gift he is sharing through the new podcast series, "The Beauty Within."