FREE access to the digital edition and archives until September 2. Click here. →
Browse › 2014 › May
May 16, 2014
Updated 10/16/14 TORONTO - With $26.5 million already pledged — including $5 million from a single donor — the Archdiocese of Toronto has officially kicked off one of the largest Church-based fundraising campaigns in Canadian history.
TORONTO - Fr. Michael Simoes was led to the priesthood after a series of childhood events.
TORONTO - Growing up, Fr. Omar Hernandez had everything he needed but lacked true love for his family, which kept him blind to what he had the whole time.
TORONTO - Fr. Marijan Šiško thought he would spend his life serving food but God decided he was better suited to serving the faith.
May 17, 2014
TORONTO - As Fr. Omar Hernandez prepared to be ordained to the priesthood with four classmates, his only regret was that his family in Colombia wouldn’t be here to see it. But he soon found out the Lord works in mysterious ways.
WINNIPEG - The Catholic Register’s veteran reporter and photographer Michael Swan was awarded four first-place prizes at the annual Canadian Church Press gala dinner.
The man behind this book is perhaps just as important as the book’s content. Retired Archbishop Sylvain Lavoie is a northern Canadian bishop and a missionary Oblate priest. He has spent most of his life and ministry working among Canada’s aboriginal people. He has extensive experience and an incredible reputation with those who have struggled with addictions, generational trauma and abuse. He is in demand as a retreat leader, spiritual director and pastoral presence.
WARSAW, Poland - A Catholic bishop who was starved and forced to stand naked in winter will be beatified as a martyr in Romania, 63 years after dying of malnutrition in a communist prison.
TORONTO - As a young man, Fr. Scott Birchall always pictured himself as an urban planner, not a priest.
TORONTO - A conversation with an atheist convinced Fr. Neiman D’Souza to become a man of God.
TORONTO - It’s 5 a.m. and much of the city is still at rest, but not Cardinal Thomas Collins. No, he’s up even before the birds.
May 18, 2014
May 15 was Nakba Day — not exactly a holiday in the Palestinian West Bank because few people can afford to take a day off work, but a day of commemoration.
VATICAN CITY - Despite fevered speculation in the media and across Latin America, the Vatican says Pope Francis has not advanced slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero toward sainthood — at least, not yet.
Sudanese Christians have condemned the sentencing of a Christian woman to death by hanging after she married a Christian man.
The last fully and completely Christian village in the Middle East is home of the only beer manufactured in the Palestinian Territories. Taybeh beer is named after the town of 1,300 Palestinian Christians within sight of the Dead Sea.
The first Chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismark, asked how many soldiers the pope has. Nineteenth century politics could be like that. But it's probably the wrong question for this century. Syria, Iraq, even Palestinian intifadas that pit rocks and kids against the most modern military in the region have demonstrated the limitations of boots on the ground.
May 19, 2014
MEXICO CITY - Fr. Andres Larios once supported the highly effective self-defense groups, which formed to fight off drug cartels carrying out various crimes in Mexico's western state of Michoacan. He lent them spiritual support, endorsed their activities and let them ring the church bells to call the community to meetings or warn of pending dangers.
NEW YORK - To hear Cardinal Walter Kasper tell it, he became the Pope’s point man for reform in the Catholic Church thanks to a bit of serendipity, or, if you will, Providence, before anyone knew that Francis was going to be the next Roman pontiff.
May 20, 2014
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican’s financial watchdog has reported a dramatic increase in suspicious transactions at the Vatican bank, but officials sought to downplay any rise in criminal activity.
If there's anything religion is not, it is most certainly not a refuge from politics. Pope Francis is still several days from arriving in the Holy Land, but the politics of his visit are already raging.