FREE access to the digital edition and archives until September 2. Click here. →
Browse › 2015 › December
December 10, 2015
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican has said that Catholics should witness to their faith but not undertake organized efforts to convert Jews, a significant step forward in the once tense relations between the two faiths.
December 11, 2015
We are all called to be saints as we are all called to claim our place in Heaven as children of God. Because this is no easy task, God has given us the saints that have come before us as a huge source of inspiration.
Mother Mary is the “Mother of the civilization of love,” according to a new documentary film, Guadalupe: The Miracle and the Message.
Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl reckons it was the first kosher meal ever served in the 190-year history of Ottawa’s Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica, though it’s hard to say for sure. But the first meeting of the national Canadian Catholic-Jewish Dialogue certainly marked a new chapter in Christian-Jewish relations in Canada.
WINDSOR, ONT. - A jury found a former priest of St. Anne parish here guilty of stealing more than $170,000 from the church Dec. 10.
TORONTO - Canadian charities count on the arrival of the Christmas spirit as the final six weeks of the year account for almost half of their annual donations.
PARIS - Faith-based groups presented French President Francois Hollande with 1.8 million signatures of people seeking a fair climate change agreement that would stop global warming and protect the poor, reported religious groups in Paris for the U.N. climate change conference.
VATICAN CITY - As reformed rules for marriage annulment cases came into effect, Pope Francis said the new norms are to be adhered to in order to help bring healing to failed marriages.
ROME - The survival of Christianity in the Middle East has reached such a critical point that the chances of dialogue and reconciliation in the region are being threatened, said Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako of Baghdad.
MEXICO CITY - For the Dec. 9 feast of St. Juan Diego, traditional indigenous dancers known as "concheros" and "chinelos" danced outside the Old Chapel of the Indians on the grounds of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
December 12, 2015
MEXICO CITY - Jonathan Gonzalez lugged a large statue of St. Juan Diego into the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe on a recent Sunday, showing no signs of strain as he moved through the masses at the world's most-visited Marian shrine.
Pope Francis celebrated Mass on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Saturday evening, saying Mary “has experienced the divine mercy, and has hosted the very source of this mercy in her womb: Jesus Christ.”
TORONTO - Roger McCrorie is searching for the perfect home to hang his treasured Josyp Terelya rendition of the Divine Mercy.
PARIS - A day after Islamic extremists massacred 130 people in Paris last month, a Muslim-Catholic couple married in Lyon. It had to be a civil ceremony because the Muslim family refused to enter a church. Shocked by the attacks, some relatives even asked whether they should go ahead with the ceremony at all.
December 13, 2015
TORONTO - Syria’s civil war has seen families pulling their children out of school as they escape the growing violence and persecution in the area. Many have not been back to school since the war started in 2012.
TORONTO - A renovated four-bedroom house in Riverdale recently sold for $2.1 million. Half of 176 houses sold in the Toronto neighbourhood earlier this year went for more than $716,000. The traffic on the neighbourhood streets is backed up with high-end Mercedes, Lexuses and other exotic brands. Coffee in the neighbourhood will set you back the better part of a $5 bill.
The daily pilgrimage of every prisoner takes on new meaning this year, thanks to Pope Francis and the Jubilee Year of Mercy that began on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Dec. 8. From now until the end of November 2016, each time a prisoner walks across the threshold of his jail cell mercy and relief from the pain of sin awaits.
December 14, 2015
Pope Francis on Sunday opened the Holy Door for the Jubilee Year of Mercy, which officially began last week.
VATICAN CITY - On the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pope Francis announced that he would travel to the Marian shrine in Mexico City and pray to Mary so that Christian communities "may become oases and rivers of mercy."
VATICAN CITY - With the opening the Holy Door at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Pope Francis declared that the time for tenderness, joy and forgiveness had begun.