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July 26, 2019
WASHINGTON -- More than 180 faith leaders in Texas, including 18 Catholics, signed a statement sent to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice July 23 asking the agency to change its policy banning prison chaplains from execution chambers.
Authors of dystopian novels are bound to get a lot wrong. After all, they are looking into what they believe will be a dark future which is inherently unpredictable. The year 1984, for example, turned out to be nothing like George Orwell’s famous novel of the same name.
July 27, 2019
In June, for the first time ever, Canadians told pollsters their number one concern is the environment. This puts Canadians on the same page with Pope Francis, who has called on everybody — Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, even atheist — to face up to the reality of human-caused climate change in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’.
The timing could hardly be better for the Canadian arm of the Global Catholic Climate Movement when it officially launches in September.
As the director of a world-leading institute for studies in ecology and theology retires, it’s going to be all hands on deck at the University of St. Michael’s College to maintain the edge it has established over the last 28 years with the Elliott Allen Institute for Theology and Ecology.
Sitting on a patio having coffee, Fr. George was watching people rush along in the shadow of the big bank towers. He was silent, contemplating them.
July 28, 2019
18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Aug. 4 (Year C) Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23; Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11; Luke 12:13-21 The author of Ecclesiastes will never win a prize for being the most joyful or hopeful individual in the Bible.
EDMONTON -- With vocations to the priesthood declining — and a call to renew their mission in Canada — the Oblates of Mary Immaculate are leaving St. Charles Parish in north Edmonton.
It was just a regular conversation between a bishop and a pastoral intern, sharing coffee and small talk between Masses. But when it was finished, the Halifax-Yarmouth archdiocese had set in motion its own unique project to pray for the renewal of the local Church.
Sleeping late on a Sunday morning a few weeks back, I decided to substitute the 9 a.m. Mass at the church just down the road in our home parish for an 11:30 Mass in a nearby parish.
July 29, 2019
WASHINGTON -- As the Archdiocese of St. Louis released a list of names of archdiocesan clergy with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor July 26, Archbishop Robert J. Carlson acknowledged that seeing the names "will be painful" and publishing them "will not change the past."
VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican press office said that the results of a morphological analysis of bones and bone fragments found at an ossuary in a Vatican cemetery concluded that none belonged to Emanuela Orlandi, a young Italian woman who has been missing for more than 30 years.
VATICAN CITY -- Days after rescue workers recovered the bodies of dozens of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, Pope Francis urged the international community to "act quickly" to prevent future tragedies.
MANCHESTER, England -- The Vatican has allowed the bishops of Zimbabwe to open the sainthood cause of a British missionary murdered after he refused to abandon his ministry to people with Hansen's disease during the country's civil war.
MANILA, Philippines -- A Catholic bishop in the northernmost island of the Philippines has appealed for prayers and help for victims of twin earthquakes that rocked Batanes province July 27.
Fr. M. Owen Lee, a Basilian educator with a passion for opera that led to 23 years as a knowledgeable commentator on Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, died July 25 at Presentation Manor in Toronto. He was 89.
WASHINGTON -- A federal judge July 26 dismissed a $250 million lawsuit against The Washington Post by a Kentucky Catholic high school student, ruling the newspaper's articles and tweets about the student's actions after the annual March for Life in January were protected by the First Amendment.
A Jesuit figure that stood beside a statue commemorating Samuel de Champlain will not be returning when the City of Orillia reinstalls the monument commemorating the famed French explorer.
July 30, 2019
VATICAN CITY -- Prostitution is a horrendous crime that reduces vulnerable women to tortured slaves who are at the mercy of their clients, Pope Francis said.
VATICAN CITY -- An elderly religious sister who worked for many years at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the papal residence, was at her congregation's house recovering from surgery when she received an unexpected visit from Pope Francis.