Data from two major polling firms show Canadians are nowhere close to the caricature of faith-hostile atheists that we’ve been led to believe characterize us.

We may be powerless to save Egyptian Christians from terrorist bombings, Syrian civilians from poison-gas attacks or to silence the guns in Africa’s many war zones, but Easter reminds us to never despair from walking as disciples of hope and peace.

It’s been said family can provide us with great strength and expose our greatest weaknesses. Or, as comedian George Burns once said: “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”

As civilian deaths mount in Mosul and as Pope Francis appeals to combatants to spare innocent lives in the “beloved Iraqi nation,” a small ray of hope has emerged not 85 km away in the city of Irbil.

Heading into church last month for the noon-hour service on Ash Wednesday, I walked along the sidewalk behind two middle-aged couples decked out in office-type apparel. I overheard that one of the couples was heading out for a bite of lunch and the other was skipping lunch to attend the service that marks the beginning of Lenten fasting, penance and prayer that is now entering its final days before we reach the glory of Easter Sunday.

“What good can this wretched intolerance and religious bigotry effect?”

The pledge was buried deep within the federal budget and delivered almost as an afterthought. Still, it is encouraging to see the Liberals keeping a 2015 election promise on palliative care.

Lent gives us two solemn feasts, St. Joseph and the Annunciation of the Lord. Both fell in the last weeks of March, and it is likely that a majority of Canadian parishes did not celebrate both of them; a great many likely celebrated neither.

At the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church wiped its hands of its “long century” of defensive reaction to the modern world and climbed into what it hoped would be a new era of dialogue. However, it takes (at least) two to dialogue and over the last 50 years the Church’s willingness to talk about important issues has not often been reciprocated by the secular world.

Almost six years ago The Catholic Register reported that the world’s 193rd nation came into being as a That was South Sudan in 2011 facing an uncertain future.