FREE access to the digital edition and archives until September 2. Click here. →
Browse › 2014 › September
September 5, 2014
When I was eight, one of my friends made a statement that baffled me: she didn’t know any of her cousins. Growing up, I had this precon-ceived notion that everyone had a large family, and every Sunday my peers, like me, would go to church, walk down to their grand-parents’ house afterwards for brunch and play with their cousins long into the afternoon.
TORONTO - Amanda, a former youth-in-care with the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, is acutely aware that her 19-month-old son’s future is dependent on her success in school.
Killing off the old, the infirm and the disabled won’t promote the human rights, dignity or freedom of anybody, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition argues in a factum submitted to the Supreme Court of Canada Aug. 28.
NEW YORK - In life, Archbishop Fulton Sheen was exceptional, a riveting Catholic preacher on radio who outpolled star comedian Milton Berle in the early days of television, winning two Emmys and a following that was the envy of Bible-thumping Protestants.
VATICAN CITY - The wisdom of "It takes a village to raise a child" has been lost as kids are either overprotected by permissive parents or neglected, Pope Francis said.
September 6, 2014
RICHMOND HILL, ONT. - When a humanitarian project that turned old milk bags into sleeping mats stalled, Cathie Furfaro found new partners for the initiative at the nearby parish.
TORONTO - For the past 25 years Scarborough Retirement Centre has been providing Catholic seniors a like minded community where they can comfortably live out their golden years.
VATICAN CITY - Walking to a cemetery on All Saints' Day, watching television past 10 p.m., even slaughtering a kid goat on Easter were once so highly suspect in Albania, they would trigger neighbourhood spies to tip off communist authorities.
Despite reports in August that about half of the candidates for Ontario's school board trustee positions were running uncontested, the Ontario Catholic School Trustees' Association isn't worried about the election's integrity.
VATICAN CITY - The "Francis effect" has spilled over into the Sistine Chapel, bringing a surge in visitors but also increasing risks to maintenance of what Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums, calls "the world's chapel."
September 7, 2014
Today’s L’Arche finds itself challenged at both ends of life.
There’s a fork in the road on Manger Street in Bethlehem, just before you reach the separation wall and the main Israeli checkpoint. Down the road that runs parallel to the wall you find Ma’an lil-Hayat, a L’Arche project. The Arabic name means “Human Life.”
L'Arche has been with us for 50 years. A half century ago, in a very different world, Jean Vanier started something in the French countryside that has made the whole world think about what it means to be human, what we owe to our humanity and how we care for the broken and fragile among us. Fifty years of kindness and care, hope and humanity is worth celebrating.
September 8, 2014
VATICAN CITY - War is just "senseless slaughter" and should never be seen as inevitable or a done deal, Pope Francis said.
VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis mourned the deaths of three Xaverian Missionary Sisters of Mary, who were murdered in two separate attacks in their residence in Burundi.
September 9, 2014
BELFAST, Northern Ireland - For years, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, refused to heed repeated calls for him to step down over alleged cover-ups of sexual abuse of children by clergy.
MIAMI - Pope Francis sent a letter of condolence to the family a Steven Sotloff, the second U.S. journalist slain this summer by ISIS, also known as Islamic State.
September 10, 2014
TORONTO - Mahir Aboudi’s aging mother and father — on the run from the Islamic State and holed up with thousands of refugees in Irbil, Kurdistan — can’t join their son and his family in Canada as refugees because they haven’t yet crossed an international border, Conservative cabinet member Jason Kenney told Aboudi and his family.
OTTAWA - Religious leaders, including two Imams, denounced the barbarism of the Islamic State and urged the protection of Iraqi Christians and other minorities during a Parliament Hill rally on Sept. 6.
TORONTO - The people came to pray and were told to act.