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From the NOR Dossiers

Basil's Travels

Freak Bus Across Afghanistan

TALES FROM THE GREAT HIPPIE TRAIL — PART II

Thomas Basil

May 2023

My rescuers had, without any advance notice, sacrificed their money, time, and convenience for the sake of this foreigner, this stranger, perhaps this infidel.

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Night Bus Across Baluchistan

TALES FROM THE GREAT HIPPIE TRAIL — PART I

Thomas Basil

April 2023

For $333 I would receive “transportation by bus and double occupancy of a tent” on an escorted 60-day ride from Frankfurt, Germany, to Kathmandu, Nepal.

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The Divine Life of St. Nazianz

MYSTERIOUS EVENTS IN THE WISCONSIN WOODS

Tom Basil

April 2022

This Catholic town was created out of raw Wisconsin woodlands by a single priest as a utopian religious haven.

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Beyond Balkanization

CROATIA & ITS CARDINAL

Thomas Basil

May 2020

Croatia's cardinal Stepinac faced opposition unimaginable to most prelates in the modern West. By all indications, he did not buckle.

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Religious Rebirth in the Black Mountains

AMID BOUTS OF CONVERT BEWILDERMENT SYNDROME

Thomas Basil

May 2018

A Montenegrin national census asked about religious affiliation. Seventy-two percent answered Orthodox, 3.5 percent Catholic, and 19 percent Muslim.

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A Church Rises from the Ruins

BROTHERS OF THE SWORD, THE SINGING REVOLUTION & JOHN PAUL'S LAST BISHOP

Thomas Basil

January-February 2015

Catholicism in 1980s Estonia amounted to one shunned priest living in a closet; his flock numbered fewer than a half dozen souls.

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God & Man in Kyiv

RELIGIOUS SUPPRESSION ON YOUTUBE

Thomas Basil

November 2012

Monastery of the Caves was founded on the Dnieper River in A.D. 1015, when Kyiv was capital of the Russian state. The monastery is one of Orthodoxy's greatest.

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A Mass in Latvia

FROM COMMUNISM TO CHRISTIANITY

Thomas Basil

April 2010

Here Catholics can discover a Church tougher and more unashamed than their own, and perhaps can learn how to persevere against a cultural elite that despises them.

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Travels in Europe's Once & Future Faith

CHRISTIANITY ON THE CONTINENT

Thomas Basil

April 2009

From 2001 to 2008 this author traveled to 16 European countries for business, attending Mass in each. This is what I encountered.

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Contrasts in Christendom: Red Lights in Amsterdam, Neon In Malta

ON THE ROCK WITH ST. PAUL

Thomas Basil

October 2006

One country has kept Catholicism in the attic for centuries. The other has kept Catholicism alive, even on uninhabited islands.

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At the Tomb of St. Thérèse

THE LITTLE FLOWER AND THE GREAT WAR

Thomas Basil

October 2004

She was thought so unimportant in her day that her newspaper obituary read: "Death on 30 September, of Marie Françoise Thérèse Martin, 24 years 9 months, nun at Carmel, rue de Jivarot."

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Graffiti in Warsaw, Mormons in Krakow, & Basements in Auschwitz

TRAVELS IN POLAND

Thomas Basil

May 2004

In Poland the presumption is that truth is one, and there is only the true Church. If it's not Catholic, it's not true. The spiritual maze is simple to navigate.

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At Mass in Lenin's City

AN ALTAR CONSECRATED BY PRIESTLY BLOOD

Thomas Basil

March 2003

The Catholic Church is the only large institution left for effective resistance to Trotsky's enduring Culture of Death and its ruinous impact.

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