Start your morning with the team on EWTN radio! We’ll be discussing the BIG headlines of the day including new appointments at the USCCB as they meet in Baltimore this week!

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on Tuesday elected Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston as its president, and Archbishop Jose Gómez of Los Angeles vice-president. Cardinal DiNardo has served as conference vice-president since 2013. He was elected president at the bishops’ fall assembly Nov. 15 in Baltimore, and will serve a three-year term. The bishops’ conference president plays a significant role in coordinating and leading charitable and social work and education, while providing a public face for the Catholic Church in the U.S.

Father Thomas Petri of the Dominican House of Studies will be joining us as we speak with John Beaulieu of Franciscan University of Steubenville about the unique gifts of the Holy Spirit and how we can rely on this gifts to change our own lives and empower us to to make an impact on the lives of others. Learn more about Beaulieu by visiting http://www.Franciscan.edu!

Today the Charlotte Lozier Institute announced the release of its latest patient testimonial video at StemCellResearchFacts.org, a project of the Washington, D.C.-based research and policy group. In the video, Doug Oliver describes the frightening effects of losing his eyesight in his early 30s, including being unable to see his wife’s face. Oliver was diagnosed with macular degeneration and pronounced legally blind.  Then the same doctor who initially thought his case was hopeless suggested treatment with adult stem cells. Oliver’s own bone marrow cells were used to repair his damaged eyesight, and he says, “Now I can see the beautiful sparkle in Anne’s blue eyes.” We’ll speak to Dr. David Prentice about this new research and what it might mean for millions of Americans struggling with degenerative diseases…

We also talk about a new cause of sainthood that might be taken up – the cause of Julia Greeley with Father Blaine Burkey!

Julia Greeley, Denver’s Angel of Charity, was born into slavery, at Hannibal, Missouri, sometime between 1833 and 1848. While she was still a young child, a cruel slavemaster, in the course of beating her mother, caught Julia’s right eye with his whip and destroyed it.

Freed by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Julia subsequently earned her keep by serving white families in Missouri, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico—though mostly in the Denver area. Whatever she did not need for herself, Julia spent assisting poor families in her neighborhood. When her own resources were inadequate, she begged for food, fuel and clothing for the needy. One writer later called her a “one-person St. Vincent de Paul Society.” To avoid embarrassing the people she helped, Julia did most of her charitable work under cover of night through dark alleys.

Julia entered the Catholic Church at Sacred Heart Parish in Denver in 1880, and was an outstanding supporter of all that the parish had to offer. The Jesuits who ran the parish considered her the most enthusiastic promoter of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus they had ever seen. Every month she visited on foot every fire station in Denver and delivered literature of the Sacred Heart League to the firemen, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

A daily communicant, Julia had a rich devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessed Virgin and continued her prayers while working and moving about. She joined the Secular Franciscan Order in 1901 and was active in it till her death in 1918.

As she lived in a boarding house, Julia’s body was laid out in church, and immediately many hundreds of people began filing pass her coffin to pay their grateful respect. She was buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery (sect. 8, Block 7), and to this day many people have been asking that her cause be considered for canonization.

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See you bright and early–we’ll be looking for you!