Religious leaders across Canada are making a valiant attempt at slowing down this speeding train called Medical Assistance in Dying, and we can only hope their appeal is not falling on entirely deaf ears.

The four nuns who arrived in Toronto (population 30,000) on Oct. 7, 1851 had a single task — to care for children orphaned by the typhus epidemic that had ravaged the Irish Catholic immigrant community.

It has been 794 years since St. Francis of Assisi left this Earth, but you can find his fingerprints all over the Pope’s latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti .

Canada joined an exclusive international club last month, but there is no reason to brag.

As Canada’s bishops gathered on computer screens this past week, bypassing the “norm” of their usual annual plenary, the old saying “what a difference a year makes” was probably uttered more than once.

The Pope’s first official trip outside Rome in more than seven months couldn’t come at a better, or more critical, time.

The word “jubilee” suggests a joyous celebration, but that is hardly the context for the theme Pope Francis has put on this year’s Season of Creation.

Fifty-five years ago, Pope Paul VI penned these words on the eve of the official end of Vatican II:

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. 

In the darkest days of “The Troubles,” when Northern Ireland was torn by sectarian violence and bitter political divisions, John Hume dared to see a future built on peace.