Grandfathered in

After more than a century of construction, the Sagrada Família finally has a building permit. On June 7 the city government of Barcelona, Spain, issued what is apparently the first building permit ever obtained by the iconic Catholic church. Work on the 137-year-old project first began in 1882, and famed Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí directed the construction and design beginning the next year. Officials with the privately funded modernist masterpiece expect the building to be finished in 2026.

The view from ‘Doralzuela’

[ May 25 ] The experience in Venezuela mirrors what has happened in much of Africa: initial excitement and great promises followed by stagnation, ending in despair and greatly reduced standards of living. I wish we had as great a faith in the living God as they have in their dead social experiment. —Clarke McIntosh on wng.org

Arrested

Unbreakable bonds

[ May 11, p. 34 ] I am so grateful for your magazine. I can enjoy the movie critiques and news reports, such as the one on Notre Dame (“Burning issues,” p. 10), and then savor the insight and hope-filled writing of Mindy Belz on Christian persecution, all in one sitting. —Tom Hovsepian / Lahaina, Hawaii

58,936

The estimated number of Los Angeles County, Calif., residents who are homeless, up 12 percent from last year.

$19.1 billion

The value of a long-debated disaster relief bill that Congress passed on June 3 and President Trump later signed. The package provides aid to Puerto Rico and states affected by hurricanes and flooding.

‘Embryonic pulsing’

The euphemism employed by The New York Times to describe the heartbeat of a child in the womb. In the May 29 story Times correspondent Alan Blinder wrote that Louisiana’s heartbeat bill would ban abortion “after the pulsing of what becomes the fetus’s heart can be detected.”

Down on digging

Officials in an Outer Banks, N.C., town have a message for visitors: Stop digging holes in the beach sand. The complaints from officials in Nags Head began in 2015 when officials posted a picture of a hole dug so deeply that the bottom could only be accessed with a ladder. Officials say they don’t know why beachgoers are spending vacation time digging, but they note the deep holes pose a threat to people or animals that might fall into one. Nags Head officials posted the request to the town’s Facebook page on May 21, ahead of the tourist season.