{mosimage}In his winning stride through the U.S. Democratic presidential primaries, Illinois Senator Barack Obama didn’t bring American Catholics along with him.

Some pundits believe that Obama cannot win the White House in November without this important group, which constitutes almost a quarter of the U.S. population. The primary results in the must-win states of Pennsylvania and Ohio certainly do not bode well for the Obama campaign. In Pennsylvania, 70 per cent of self-described Catholics went for Hillary Clinton, while in Ohio, she won 65 per cent of the vote in this category.

I’m writing this column in a room on the psychiatric ward of a large downtown hospital. I’m not here as a visitor or observer. I’m a patient.

{mosimage}The residential towers now sprouting up across downtown Toronto regularly rouse the ire of citizens. People don’t like these structures for all kinds of reasons: because they cast long shadows, because they increase local traffic, because they make bad fits with the often low-rise neighbourhoods that surround them. But until now, I’ve never heard people objecting to a high-rise development because it threatens to eat up a parking lot.

{mosimage}At last, the food crisis now afflicting millions of the Earth’s poorest people has caught the attention of the well-off nations of Europe and North America. One has to wonder whether we would have ever woken up had not riots and protests broken out earlier this year in a dozen countries across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America.

The North American newspaper is a wonderful thing. Since its rise some 300 years ago, this medium has helped build civil society and advance democracy. It has linked people together over the vast distances of the continent, and it has provided these people with the facts about what is happening in the world, and why.

{mosimage}For many Catholics around the world, including this one, the joy of this Easter season has been shadowed by the sadness and rage we feel at the kidnapping and death of Paulos Faraj Rahho, Chaldean Catholic archbishop of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

The culture of death hates the Catholic Church, with good reason. We stand for life in all its fullness, beauty and possibility, perhaps never before more actively and consistently than we do right now.

{mosimage}In the spiritual and intellectual adventure that has brought humankind to the present moment, no place has played a more influential role than the Middle East.

I have a friend, a fellow writer, whom I’m here calling Peter. That’s not his real name, but I can assure you he’s real.