Michael Swan

Jesuit physicist, a loyal friend, problem solver

December 2, 2014

Ultra High Frequency, Extremely High Frequency and Super High Frequency — 300 MHz to 300 GHz — doesn’t sound much like a religious vocation. But for a Jesuit like Fr. Bill Lonc microwaves were just one more opportunity to discover God in all things.

Chalice takes on roots of poverty

November 30, 2014

What Fr. Pat Cosgrove started in anger is ending in communion. Chalice, the Catholic Canadian child sponsorship agency, has matured into a real partner to help feed poor communities in Africa, Latin America, Asia, Haiti and Ukraine.

Farming locally, helping globally

November 30, 2014

Fifty years ago Len Kraemer was young, strong, intelligent and rural, which is why he was helping bring in a crop of hay on the family farm near Walkerton, Ont. As he jammed his gloves on harder and lifted bales of hay under the afternoon sun, young Kraemer started thinking about Africa.

Food bank use continues to rise

November 30, 2014

More than 840,000 Canadians got food from a food bank in March this year. That isn’t the number who needed food they couldn’t afford. It’s just the number who swallowed their pride and figured out when and where they could collect a box of groceries consisting for the most part of stuff grocery shoppers didn’t want for themselves.

Teilhard De Chardin and human transcendence

November 29, 2014

The third and most ambitious staging yet of playwright Adam Seybold’s play The De Chardin Project begins with an image of sin. Fr. Teilhard De Chardin, played by Cyrus Lane, wakes up on a bare, black stage beside a broken tea cup. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got there and he can make out nothing of his surroundings except the broken china.

At St. Michael’s Choir School, tradition matters

November 29, 2014

TORONTO - St. Michael’s Choir School brings Christmas, real Christmas, in six-part polyphony, to Toronto’s Massey Hall for the 49th time this Dec. 6 and 7. But if you haven’t managed to buy a $20 to $50 ticket yet, you could head down to Shuter Street and look for a scalper.

The human tragedy of hunger

November 29, 2014

The planet produces enough food to feed everyone, yet more than 800 million people go hungry every day.

D&P hopeful, but wary, of federal corporate responsibility policy

November 27, 2014

A relaunched corporate social responsibility policy for Canadian mining companies has Development and Peace hopeful that Canadian companies will be held accountable for their environmental, labour and community investment records in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Trying to reconcile faith with farming ethics

November 23, 2014

Charina Umagat has been an involved, engaged parishioner at St. Emile parish in Winnipeg for 20 years. The last thing she expected to find in her pew on a Sunday was a pamphlet casting moral doubt on her job and her employer.

Pius XII book earns honour for King’s prof Ventresca

November 22, 2014

A Canadian has captured the first ever American Catholic Historical Association prize for biography.