exclamation

Important notice: To continue serving our valued readers during the postal disruption, complete unrestricted access to the digital edition is available at no extra cost. This will ensure uninterrupted digital access to your copies. Click here to view the digital edition, or learn more.

TORONTO - Truth in all forms of human expression reveals the sacred. Since the beginning, the Church has encouraged artists to express and complement the Gospel message through art.

Published in Arts News

Widespread slaughter, expulsion, kidnapping and rape of Christians, Yezidis and other ethnic and religious minorities in territory controlled by the Islamic State may well constitute a genocide, but the Canadian government will not join a growing international movement and formally call it a genocide before there is a proper, third party investigation.

Published in Canada

VATICAN CITY - Easter is a feast of hope, a celebration of God's mercy and a call to pray for and assist all who suffer, Pope Francis said before giving his solemn blessing "urbi et orbi" (to the city and the world).

Published in Faith

MONTREAL - Canada’s first Syriac Catholic bishop says his immediate challenge is to minister to refugees from the Middle East and at the same time move forward with plans for evangelization in his vast new Canadian diocese as he prepares for the demands of the Easter season.

Published in Canada

VATICAN CITY - Five years after the war in Syria began, there is a "feeling of helplessness in front of an endless human tragedy," a Vatican official told the UN Human Rights Council.

Published in International

With seven million Syrian children forced into poverty, almost three million out of school and two million living in cities under siege, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF estimates 80 per cent of Syria’s children have suffered harm in the five-year-old war.

Published in Canada

AMMAN, Jordan - As peace talks get underway in Geneva trying to end the 5-year-old war in Syria, the U.N. children's agency warned that more than 80 per cent of Syria's children have been harmed by the destructive conflict.

Published in International

Retired lawyer Bob Doherty has no illusions about becoming fluent in Arabic but he’s taking a language course at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax in order to ease the transition for the Syrian refugee family his parish will soon welcome.

Published in Canada

VATICAN CITY - Even in the midst of constant bombing, Jesuit and Salesian priests remain in war-torn Aleppo, Syria, trying to create a sense of normalcy for those unable to leave.

Published in International

OTTAWA - As peace continues to elude wartorn Syria, Canadian Catholics are being asked to remain in solidarity with those ravaged by the conflict.

Published in Canada
February 22, 2016

It is genocide

Speaking on Ash Wednesday Cardinal Thomas Collins said the start of Lent was not a day that Christians in Syria could line up for the blessing of ashes. Instead, the ashes in their lives are what remains of the churches and homes they fled at gunpoint.

Published in Editorial

There’s more than political interest, strategic advantage, and military considerations in the decision to end Canadian bombing runs over Syria and Iraq in favour of more military trainers on the ground and additional spending on aid and development.

Published in Canada

TORONTO - The federal government is seeking to pair displaced Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war in their homeland with their families already in Canada or with groups ready to sponsor them.

Published in Canada

VATICAN CITY - A negotiated political resolution is the only answer to the crisis unfolding in Syria, Pope Francis said, urging world leaders to do everything possible to kick-start talks.

Published in Vatican

MANCHESTER, England - A European bishops' commission has welcomed a move by the European Parliament to classify atrocities and religious cleansing by the Islamic State as genocide.

Published in International