The New Yorker website has a photo of a Pakistani woman grieving over her murdered daughter, a worker in a polio vaccination clinic in a Karachi hospital.     It instantly reminded me of the terracotta statue of the grieving Madonna crafted by Niccolo dArca in the fifteenth century, located in the church of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna. The Piet, the compianto, never ends.

Rev. Joseph A. Komonchak, professor emeritus of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, is a retired priest of the Archdiocese of New York.

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