Stephanie Perdew

A week before I taught my first class on comparative religion at a Jesuit middle school in New Haven, Connecticut, my 80-year-old coworker turned to me and said, “The students will not know who you are. They will not know what to think of you. But if you roll up your sleeves and they see your tattoos, they will want to know who you are.” My students were all local Black and Brown children living at or below the federal poverty line.

For the first time in centuries, on March 29, Catholics in Jerusalem were prevented from celebrating the Palm Sunday mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Israeli Police prevented Pierbattista Pizzaballa, head of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, and Francesco Ielpo, the official guardian of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, from entering the church as they made their way to celebrate mass.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, speaks to journalists during a press conference at the patriarchate headquarters in Jerusalem's Old City, December 22, 2025.