FREE access to the digital edition and archives until September 2. Click here. →
Browse › 2020 › August
August 26, 2020
The sun glistens across the calming blue water of Lake Erie. A bronze Mass bell rings loudly. Dozens of young girls soar out of cabins to enjoy a delicious pancake breakfast before engaging in hiking, drama, sports, crafts and, at the end of the day, a roaring campfire.
WURZBURG, Germany -- The German bishops plan to seek talks with the Vatican about its instruction on parish reforms in the Catholic Church, and want lay Catholics to take part in the discussions, according to the German Catholic news agency KNA.
Whether or not you’ve heard the term “cancel culture,” you’ve undoubtedly been observing it just about everywhere, gaining more and more traction.
VATICAN CITY -- Christians cannot stand idly by and watch as millions of people are deprived of their basic needs because of others' greed, Pope Francis said.
VATICAN CITY -- Twenty-six weeks after his last weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, Pope Francis will resume his audiences with the public present, but in a Vatican courtyard.
August 27, 2020
If you ever doubted the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, check out your parish’s COVID-era finances. After months of closed doors and no revenue, followed by months of full-cost operations for Sunday congregations that are a fraction of normal attendance, somehow your parish is still up and running.
The news that parishes have taken a financial punch to the gut during the pandemic is not surprising. What can’t happen is allowing them to wallow in financial uncertainty, threatening the services that have defined Catholic values and, in so many ways, our lives.
Hate crimes It’s sad that we have come to a time when churches and statues of saints are being defaced and vandalized.
VATICAN CITY -- Catholics will mark the World Day of Migrants and Refugees during the ecumenical celebration of the Season of Creation, highlighting the obligation, as Pope Francis says, to listen to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, said Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny.
ROME -- More bishops are pleading with their governments to give priority to ethically developed coronavirus vaccines, but many also are telling Catholics that not getting vaccinated is a more serious moral problem than using the problematic vaccines.
REGINA, SASK. -- Celebrations to mark this year’s centennial of Athol Murray College of Notre Dame at Wilcox, Sask., had to be cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic. But the pioneering spirit of the charismatic priest from Toronto who willed the college into being continues to resonate.
VANCOUVER -- The B.C. Court of Appeal has agreed to hear the case of the Delta Hospice Society, which is trying to keep assisted suicide out of its Irene Thomas Hospice.
When I was in Grade 8 at St. Augustine School in Regina, one of the priests at the neighbouring Little Flower Church frequently asked me to be the altar server at funerals. After a few of these ventures, my teacher told me to stop taking time away from school to serve at these Masses. I considered his command and decided that since this was a Catholic school, being the server at these funerals was the right thing to do. So, I engaged in my first acts of civil disobedience.
August 28, 2020
Some small part of the revolution now on display in the streets of Minsk and other Belarusian cities may have begun in Catholic, rural Ireland in the 1990s. It was there that Belarus’ likely-elected president who is currently in exile visited for a month each summer for 10 years, when she was between the ages of 12 and 22.
For 24 years Antonio Gambale’s classroom has been a place where all have been welcomed and accepted, and for that, the Niagara Region teacher has been recognized with the Rick Hansen Foundation’s Difference Maker Award.
AMMAN, Jordan -- Parts of Syria's north where Kurds, Christians and Yazidis have practiced religious freedom in recent years are reportedly again under attack by mainly Turkish military and their allied Syrian Islamist fighters.
I am not a gardener. In fact, I moved into a house with a large garden a decade ago and I joke that I have killed off one species of plant each year. Except that it’s not a joke.
August 29, 2020
Katja Murray didn’t have to look far for inspiration to make the leap into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering or Math), a field where women remain largely on the outside looking in.
Uncertainty surrounding varsity sports in light of the global pandemic has 17-year-old softball player Rachelle Zilavec admittedly anxious but optimistic as she weighs the prospects of even starting her freshman season this year.
Canadian Catholic school boards are about to embark upon a September unlike any other due to COVID-19.