Croatia take the #FIFAWorldCup 3rd spot! 🇭🇷🥉@adidasfootball | #Qatar2022

— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) December 17, 2022

Argentina are in the #FIFAWorldCup Final! 🔥@adidasfootball | #Qatar2022

— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) December 13, 2022

This was a Diego Maradona performance from Lionel Messi. This was one man inspiring his team-mates through his goal, his assist, his genius. This was the Argentina captain running the show, even when seemingly inhibited from running at full pelt by a slight hamstring strain, driving his team to the World Cup final.

Even Luka Modric and his gutsy side who fear no one had to bow down before Messi. Even Croatia’s usually noisy supporters fell silent as they stared open-mouthed at Messi’s brilliance. He took his penalty unerringly, helped create Julian Álvarez’s first and then destroyed the new prince of European centre backs, Josko Gvardiol, by finally racing through the gears and setting up a simple finish for Álvarez.

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🏆⚽ Croatia 🇭🇷1 – 1 Brazil 🇧🇷 (4-2 after penalty kicks)

Croatia advances to the World Cup semifinals, after defeating Brazil 4-2 on penalties at the World Cup in Qatar, Dec. 9, 2022. pic.twitter.com/EcYzB8JEVS

— Voice of America (@VOANews) December 9, 2022

Some of the bigger names have also warmed the hearts, with Venus Williams, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal all rolling back the years to delight fans who feared their best days were behind them.

But perhaps the greatest tale of all has been the remarkable renaissance of Croatia’s Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, who has battled her way to the Australian Open semi-final at the age of 34, 19 years after her previous match win at the tournament, and 18 years since her only other grand slam semi.

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I'm so happy for you,Mirjana!
What a journey, you deserve all the success!Good luck in your @AustralianOpen semifinal,half italian girl!😊😊 pic.twitter.com/TpulrQ3ZMa

— Roberta Vinci (@roberta_vinci) January 25, 2017

This is just lovely!

“Sometimes,” said Sam Querrey’s coach Craig Boynton after the 6-7 1-6 6-3 6-7 defeat of world number one Novak Djokovic, “even a blind squirrel finds a nut.”

If that sounds a cruel verdict when your charge has just pulled off the greatest single performance of his career, you could forgive the bewilderment.

Not since 1968 had a man held four Grand Slam titles simultaneously, as Djokovic did coming in to this week. Not since the Open era began has a man rattled off 30 straight wins at Slam tournaments.

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Congratulations to him, he played well (again).

Roger Federer could not pull off another big escape at the U.S. Open, losing 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 in the semifinals Saturday against Croatia’s Marin Cilic.

It was the second significant surprise of the day, coming after Novak Djokovic was beaten 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (4), 6-3 by Japan’s Kei Nishikori, who became the first man from Asia to reach a Grand Slam singles final.

Instead of the No. 1-seeded Djokovic against the No. 2-seeded Federer — who have combined to win 24 major championships — in Monday’s final, it will be No. 10 Nishikori against No. 14 Cilic, neither of whom has ever appeared in a Grand Slam title match.

“That’s going to be a sensational day for both of us,” said Cilic, who at 25 is a year older than Nishikori.

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Ugh.

If I asked you to describe the state of Christianity in Europe, you’d probably answer “not good.” And there’d be ample reason to do so. Most of us are familiar with the depressing statistics regarding church attendance in Western Europe and Scandinavia.

But there is more to Europe than Britain, France, and Sweden. And in Central and Eastern Europe, a different story is being written.

This story was the subject of a recent First Things article by Filip Mazurczak. In it, Mazurczak reveals to readers what is going on in former communist societies such as Hungary and Croatia. For instance, while the European Union notoriously omitted any mention of Europe’s Christian heritage in the preamble to its constitution, Hungary’s new constitution “ties Christianity to Hungarian nationhood.”

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The president of Croatia told a Yale University audience Monday that his country’s social and economic future depend, in part, on the religious tolerance of its people.

Ivo Josipovic, himself an avowed agnostic, has made religious dialogue a hallmark of reform efforts in Croatia. It is central to his international dealings, as well.

“The nature of religion is always trying to push us to do something good. That’s very important to me,” Josipovic said during a speech at Yale Divinity School. “I always think that religion can be (a) bridge between different people and different states.”

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Ten years ago, I was nearly 30 and over $90,000 in debt. I had spent my twenties trying to build an interesting life; I had two degrees; I had lived in New York and the Bay Area; I had worked in a series of interesting jobs; I spent a lot of time traveling overseas. But I had also made a couple of critically stupid and shortsighted decisions. I had invested tens of thousands of dollars in a master’s degree in landscape architecture that I realized I didn’t want halfway through. While maxing out my student loans, I had also collected a toxic mix of maxed-out credit cards, personal loans, and $2,000 I had borrowed from my father for a crisis long since forgotten. My life consisted of loan deferments and minimum payments.

Like so many other lost children, I had fallen into a career in IT. The work was boring, but led to jobs with cool organizations””a lot of jobs, because I kept quitting them. As soon as I had any money in the bank, I’d quit and go backpacking in Southeast Asia. My adventures were life-changing experiences, but I was eventually left with a CV that was pretty scattershot.

My luck securing interesting jobs dried up. In 2001, I ended up living with my dad for four months and working at a banking infrastructure company in suburban Pittsburgh. I should have taken that as a warning that I needed to get it together, but I thought it was just an aberration. It was not.

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If religion, ethics and a moral conscience are banished from informing the public realm, “then the crisis of the West has no remedy and Europe is destined to collapse in on itself” and risk falling prey to every form of tyranny, he said in an audience with Croatia’s political, religious, cultural, business and academic representatives.

Free and just democracies thrive when citizens’ consciences have been formed by love and Christianity’s “logic of gift” in which the good of the whole human family is sought after, not narrow self-interests, the pope said June 4 in Zagreb’s ornate Croatian National Theater.

“The quality of social and civil life and the quality of democracy depend in large measure” on all citizens possessing and exercising a conscience that listens, not to subjective feelings, but to an objective truth that recognizes one’s duty to God and all human beings, he said.

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Pope Benedict XVI has celebrated Mass, focusing on family values, before tens of thousands of people in the Croatian capital, Zagreb.

He spoke of the “disintegration” of the family, and urged couples not to give in to a “secularised mentality” of living together instead of marrying.

He later visited the tomb of a controversial wartime cardinal.

This is Pope Benedict’s first visit to the staunchly Catholic nation and he has received a warm welcome.

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