Michael Swan

Led by two fiddlers playing the Red River Jig to the amazement of tourists, Metis delegates skirted past St. Peter’s Square on their way out from an hour-long meeting with Pope Francis before meeting the assembled press from Rome and Canada.

Rome is not just another city. It’s not even an Italian city. It belongs to the world and to God at one and the same time.

A week of spiritual diplomacy between Pope Francis and three Canadian Indigenous delegations will begin with hope, Assembly of First Nations Northwest Territories Regional Chief Gerald Antoine told an international press corps gathering on Zoom March 24.

Holy See diplomats have 500 years of history behind them

The Orthodox world, including nearly 40 Canadian Orthodox scholars and clergy, has risen up to condemn the Russian Orthodox Church for giving moral and spiritual support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

1493 papal bull casts long shadow over Church-Indigenous relations

As three separate Indigenous delegations head to Rome for meetings with Pope Francis on March 28, March 31 and April 1, Canada’s Oblate Fathers have announced a deal with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to make more residential school records available, including material that may be archived in Rome and Paris.

The Way of the Cross can be and has been explained in many ways, but before the theorizing, theologizing and prayers there is fear and there is pain.

Without grassroots Catholics, Indigenous-Church relations won’t move forward

When Pieter Claeissens the Elder was painting Moses Breaking Pharaoh’s Crown, Europe was entering a complex and confusing period of continual warfare. The crude version of this history blames it all either on Catholics trying to wipe out Protestants or Protestants trying to eliminate Catholics. Actually, it had more to do with money, geo-politics, empire, trade and a ruling class that was deeply incompetent.