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August 25, 2021
When the 2010 earthquake hit Haiti, Jesuit Fr. Jean Francky went with his brother novices out onto the streets of Dumay, on the outskirts of Port au Prince. That night, the young religious men began digging through rubble with their bare hands.
Everyone stumbles in aspects of their life, but some individuals are called to weather more arduous day-to-day challenges than others.
Campaign Life Coalition has been a major player in Canadian pro-life advocacy since it was founded in 1978, and over the years teenagers have provided much of the wind beneath this non-profit’s wings.
Catholic refugee sponsors are ready and eager to help Ottawa resettle 20,000 Afghan refugees, but three weeks after the federal government announced the new refugee resettlement target the sponsors are still waiting to learn when, how and how many refugees they can welcome.
August 26, 2021
VANCOUVER -- The personal accounts of residential school survivors will be a key part of an investigation into the former St. Paul’s Indian Residential School.
“My body, my choice. No one is going to tell me what to do with my body.”
A priest friend of mine was recently talking about the current state of affairs as it relates to religious freedom in Canada.
Anyone who believes this coming school year will be normal is kidding themselves or is a politician preparing for an election.
It’s easy for Canada to be smug about its COVID-19 vaccination rate, but we can’t afford that luxury — not when so much of the world is still starving for vaccine relief.
Cautionary tale Fr. Raymond de Souza rightly cautions that “Church-state alliances lead to a dangerous path” (Aug. 15), particularly evident in the injurious collaboration between the Catholic Church and state in the operation of residential schools. He acknowledges the 16th-century involvement by the Jesuits with Central American Indigenous peoples as an exemplary and cautionary tale. This involvement saw the Jesuits organize Indigenous people into armed military militias who defeated Bourbon-sanctioned efforts by some Europeans to enslave them. For these and other reasons, in 1759, bowing to Bourbon pressure, Pope Clement XIV ordered the dissolution of the Jesuits.
August 27, 2021
Canadians have a lot to think about before the Sept. 20 election. But for Catholics, it’s getting harder to be political and to contribute to public debate, says the author of a brand-new book about faith and politics in Canada.
As fully vaccinated, real-life students abandon their Zoom classrooms and filter back onto the University of St. Michael’s College campus, a new campus minister will be ready to provide face-to-face encounters of the spiritual kind.
Kiara Mavalwala is heading to York University this fall to study engineering in hopes of one day being able to ensure all people living in Canada have access to clean drinking water.
In a quick, COVID-constrained, snap federal election, the Archdiocese of Toronto has decided against trying to stage the kind of big, public, regional all-candidates event that was a highlight of the 2019 election campaign.
“Libertad! Libertad! Libertad!” Since July 11, the Spanish chant of liberty has sounded loud at solidarity rallies throughout Canada, the U.S. and, most fervently, in cities across Cuba as its inhabitants in a rare show of defiance against their government seek emancipation from the authoritarian regime ushered in by Fidel Castro in 1959.
In our examination of the issues related to residential schools, we looked last issue at the problems of state power in evangelization. But what about evangelization itself?
With the United States extending its non-essential travel restrictions at land border crossings until at least Sept. 21, Windsor, Ont.’s Avery Comartin finds herself in a difficult bind.
August 28, 2021
OTTAWA -- The “slippery slope” critics of the medical assistance in dying (MAiD) system have been warning about may be ready to tilt once more as a Quebec mother seeks an assisted death for her four-year-old child.
Educator and environmental advocate Anne Corkery believes there’s no greater learning environment for children than in the great outdoors.
Could this most troubling of summers for the Catholic Church across Canada spark its resurgence as a vital participant in the country’s public life? Call me a sun-addled optimist, but I carry a conviction it can so long as we avoid thinking of a phoenix rising from ashes and instead heed the Gospel call to commit ourselves to the long, hard, patient work of building Christ’s Church.