Michael Swan

Catholic teachers seek lifting of restraints

April 4, 2013

TORONTO - Ontario’s Catholic teachers are asking provincial Finance Minister Charles Sousa for freedom — freedom from bureaucrats, freedom from standardized tests, freedom to teach all kinds of students from four-year-olds to special needs kids to adult learners.

Focus Ontario budget on poor

April 4, 2013

TORONTO - The religious leaders who run food banks, shelters and community services want this spring’s Ontario budget to boost incomes for minimum-wage employees and people on Ontario Works.

Ouellet happy to serve new Pope

April 1, 2013

Unverifiable reports in the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore and MacLean’s magazine have clarified Cardinal Marc Ouellet didn’t just tell media before the conclave that becoming pope would be a nightmare, he also threw his support to Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio before the fifth and final vote that chose Pope Francis.

Benedict leaves Francis with a starting point on social justice, Jesuit says

April 1, 2013

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has left his successor with some unfinished business that Jesuit economist and theologian Fr. Bill Ryan would like to put at the top of the new pontiff ’s agenda.

D&P seeks CIDA move details

April 1, 2013

There’s nothing wrong with dissolving the Canadian International Development Agency to make it part of a new Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, says the Catholic bishops’ development agency. But there’s a host of devils in the details.

Hope for a unified Easter

March 30, 2013

This year some 300 million Christians who claim apostolic succession back to the time of Christ will celebrate Easter 35 days later than Roman Catholics.

Pope resonates with Canadians

March 30, 2013

Pope Francis had a message for Canadians at his inaugural Mass — a message of peace, simplicity, reconciliation and hope — according to several members of the official Canadian delegation in Rome on the Feast of St. Joseph to witness the beginning of a new papacy.

In the good and true is God, says fiddler MacMaster

March 30, 2013

As a theologian, Natalie MacMaster favours the toe-tapping, hand-clapping, step-dancing-around-the-kitchen-table school of theological inquiry. The Juno-Award-winning fiddler now has an honorary doctor of divinity degree to back up her theology.

Lionheart brings back 14th-century hymns of praise

March 30, 2013

TORONTO - The Renaissance has always been worth looking at — all those gorgeous paintings and striking sculptures — but it’s also worth a listen.

This conclave really was something more

March 24, 2013

Smart journalists won’t tell you they chose this career because they wanted to experience history first hand. It sounds like the self-serving, grand fantasy of a delusional paranoid narcissist. So we lie.