We’ve posted a few new items to the homepage.

• Robert Mickens’s latest Letter from Rome, in which he writes on Cardinal George Pell’s role as “not quite the czar” of Vatican finance, and on the CDF’s reluctance to cooperate with Italian authorities on the status of a priest dismissed by Benedict in 2012 “for abusing dozens of children over a ten-year period” but re-instated by Pope Francis last summer; read the whole thing here.
• The editors on the importance of The Daily Show's Jon Stewart in how news is now being covered: “Stewart has for more than a decade functioned as a valuable corrective to much of what’s wrong with mainstream news, especially political coverage that can’t seem to identify the radical intransigence of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party for what it is. By intent or default, he established himself as a relentless fact-checker and watchdog, using research, video clips, and comedy to call out politicians and other public figures on their evasions, over-simplifications—and lies.” Read the whole thing here.
• And, writing from Nigeria, Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator discusses the continued strength of Boko Haram, whose “thin veneer of religious ideology” masks “a savage and opportunistic agenda of criminality and bigotry” that has brought death and destruction mainly to Muslims and Muslim areas; read the whole thing here.
• Also, don't forget: Joseph A. Komonchak continues his series of daily Lenten reflections on the writing of Augustine; see our special Lenten Reflections 2015 page here.