You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is November 13, 2018. It is also the feast day of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini.

This week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we have been talking about our Catholic Church.

We have been talking about how it is the largest denomination of Christians in the

world with over one billion members. We also talked about how our church was founded by Jesus

Christ himself, how all of our beliefs are stated in our creed, and yet how we are a church of human beings and how we need to pray for

our church. Today we are going to talk about the idea that our church is universal. Have you ever

heard that term before? The universal Catholic Church. Well, the reason why we use

the term universal is because no matter where you go in the world, no matter what language you are

using in that place in the world, the church remains the same. As I said yesterday, with lots

of different Christian denominations, they don't necessarily answer to anyone. The pastor in that church

can decide what to talk about that Sunday. They can decide what sort of service they want to do or even where they want to do it.

They can make all of these decisions themselves.

This is not how it is in the Catholic Church.

We all have different priests that we hear say Mass on Sunday, but each of these priests is part of the same

organization. They took the same vows. They all answer to a bishop who acts as a shepherd for a larger

area of Catholic people.

And each bishop answers to the Pope in Rome.

We are all united and we all worship in the same way each time we attend Mass.

In fact, our saint, St. and Francis Xavier Cabrini, demonstrated this.

Now, St. Francis Xavier Cabrini was not born in the U.S., but she came to the U.S.

when she was already a nun.

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