Michael Swan

Faith communities join the fight against COVID-19

March 17, 2020

Faith communities across Canada are answering a call to make sacrifices to their faith practices in the national battle to control the spread of the COVID-19.

Ontario invests in anti-trafficking battle

March 14, 2020

Ontario’s new five-year, $307-million strategy to combat human trafficking “looks really great on paper,” said Catholic Women’s League Ontario president Colleen Perry.

Big graduating class brings big numbers

March 13, 2020

The Serra Club’s 2020 Ordinandi Dinner on March 3 was the biggest ever, celebrating the biggest St. Augustine’s Seminary graduating class in recent memory.

The Tenebrae tradition

March 12, 2020

The Church in Toronto has a Lenten treasure that ends not with a whimper but a bang.

‘For richer and not poorer…’

March 12, 2020

If you don’t get married you won’t get divorced. But as marriage and divorce both decline, that is no guarantee of a happier or healthier society, said a researcher who has documented a drop in divorce among Canadians.

Real ‘spiritual direction’ has defined boundaries

March 6, 2020

That Jean Vanier preyed on women who thought of him as their spiritual director is obviously a serious case of spiritual and sexual abuse. It’s also an illustration of the difference between real spiritual direction and mumbo jumbo, said Montreal-based spiritual director Jesuit Br. Dan Leckman.

For-profit multinational given welfare project

March 6, 2020

The job of helping people on welfare in Ontario’s Peel Region to find a job has fallen to the Canadian subsidiary of an Australian multinational.

Religion a factor in more than a third of hate crimes

March 6, 2020

The number of hate crimes motivated by religion are down, according to the latest statistics, but that doesn’t bring much comfort to those who are targeted.

The Resurrection revisited

March 5, 2020

Opera Atelier does not do anything by half-measures. This Easter, Toronto’s world-renowned company specializing in baroque opera is doing Handel’s The Resurrection full bore.

Medieval studies goes back for a better future

February 29, 2020

The University of St. Michael’s College is better than good if you want to study that magical millennium between 500 and 1500.