Michael Swan

Pope Pius XII: WWII hero or villain?

June 15, 2022

The latest book on Pope Pius XII, the first to include material from the complete archives up to 1958, repeats a lot of old news, but adds some interesting detail about the culture and politics of the papal court during the Second World War, according to a Canadian scholar who wrote a landmark biography of the wartime pope.

Artistic styles of Spanish Empire as real as it gets

June 10, 2022

To anyone who ever thought St. Paul was talking philosophically or theologically when he said “The wages of sin is death,” 18th-century Ecuadorean sculptor Manuel Chili, known as Caspicara, has left a message in wood, glass, metal and paint. Four sculptures called The Fates of Man illustrate St. Paul’s warning in the most immediate, visceral and concrete sense possible.

Respected elder passes unexpectedly

June 10, 2022

Nobody was expecting Indigenous elder John Robinson to die. “He hadn’t been feeling well for a few days. I finally told him, ‘Enough, you have to go to the hospital,’ ” his grieving daughter Jessica Robinson-Sibbald told The Catholic Register. “He had a massive heart attack at the hospital.”

Ecological concerns raised on state of Lac Ste. Anne

June 10, 2022

Growing up on Lac Ste. Anne in the 1940s and ’50s, Tony Belcourt remembers a rich and wondrous body of water, teeming with life.

Nigeria slaughter hits home for African-Canadians

June 8, 2022

With 22 dead and about 50 people injured in a Pentecost Sunday massacre in a Catholic church in northwestern Nigeria, African Catholics in Canada are left shaking their heads and praying for peace.

The healing waters of Lac Ste. Anne

June 2, 2022

Steve Simon knows that one of the best tricks in photography is learning how to record the invisible — things like faith, hope, healing, memory, time and wonder. The award-winning photographer, now based in New York, learned this trick early in his career at Lac Ste. Anne.

For Brenda Akaraza, Development and Peace ‘the right call’

May 29, 2022

At 30, Brenda Akaraza still laughs as easily as any teenager. She’s still as earnest as any university freshman.

‘God opens the door’ to Pakistani Catholic refugee family

May 27, 2022

Younis Gil is a small man who struggles with English. Years of stress, uncertainty and hard labour have left an imprint. But he squares his shoulders, straightens his back, meets your gaze and smiles. With his wife Saleema Bibi and surrounded by three of his adult children plus a son-in-law, he is a proud pater familias embracing a life that a few months ago was hard to imagine.

Pakistan blasphemy law ‘costing lives’

May 27, 2022

Canada can do more to counter Pakistan’s blasphemy law — a law that made refugees of the Younis family and thousands of others, whose lives are on hold in Bangkok and other places around the world — the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief told the All-Party Parliamentary Interfaith Caucus in an online presentation earlier this month.

Bill S-211 doesn’t go far enough, says Development and Peace

May 26, 2022

Canadians don’t know whether their pension fund is booking profits off nine-year-olds packing boxes 10 hours a day in Guatemala, or off of Uygher workers let out of their re-education camps to pick cotton. When Canadians click on a deal while shopping online, they can’t tell whether child or forced labour was part of the bargain price.