OTTAWA - Bishop Paul-Émile Charbonneau, the bishop emeritus of Gatineau, Que., passed away May 21. He was 92.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis has appointed three cardinals, including Cardinal Gerald Lacroix of Quebec, to try to resolve a long-standing dispute with a Peruvian university and see if it would be possible to restore the university's designation as "pontifical" and "Catholic."

In her parting words to Quebecers, politically humiliated former Premier Pauline Marois reminded us of that shining moment when she arose from her personal Eden to quick-march us to the New Jerusalem.

OTTAWA - Forces opposed to euthanasia in Quebec have expressed disappointment newly elected Premier Philippe Couillard intends to press ahead with euthanasia legislation.

Ontario Vincentians have sent more than their sympathy to citizens of Lac Mégantic, Que.

MONTREAL - Quebec must "rise again" and recover its traditional faith, Pope Francis told Quebec Archbishop Gerald Lacroix, who recently visited Rome.

OTTAWA - As the Quebec government considers an end-of-life bill that would allow euthanasia, Quebec's Catholic bishops warn that society faces a crucial choice.

OTTAWA - Quebec’s promised bill to bring in “medical aid in dying” is a “dangerous” proposal that confuses medical care with euthanasia, said Quebec’s bishops, joining numerous groups in condemning the plan.

St. Joachim’s, a small, historic parish in Châteauguay, Que., is going environmentally friendly in a big way.

The parish has joined “Green Church,” a national program developed by the Centre for Ecumenism that assists churches in adopting environmental practices, like becoming more energy and water efficient and buying local or organic.

St. Joachim is the first parish in the Valleyfield diocese to be recognized as eco-friendly, adopting the Green Church slogan, “For the love of God, let’s take care of the Earth.”

QUEBEC CITY - While university students, anti-capitalists and environmentalists have routinely mustered tens of thousands into the streets of Montreal and Quebec City over the last two months, a small coalition of conservative Christians managed 650 for the second annual Christian March from the Plains of Abraham to Quebec’s National Assembly.

The number of marchers for the June 2 event was down from about 1,000 the year before.

The regions of Lanaudiere and Mauricie, known together as “Authentic Quebec,” offer a contrast to the sophisticated metropolis of Montreal.  Both regions are rich in Catholic heritage.

Beginning a half hour east of Montreal, they are bordered in the south by Le Chemin Du Roy (the King’s Highway), which connects Quebec City to Montreal along the St. Lawrence  River, and in the north by lakes and dense forests.

In Lanaudiere, visiting the town of Terrebonne I learned of the work of Fr. Louis Lepage, the “seignior” of this land in 1720 who built the first church. Today the site, Ile des Moulins, is one of only two important reconstructed Quebec heritage sites.

OTTAWA - Archbishop Christian Lépine’s installation April 27 as archbishop of Montreal inaugurates a new era for the Quebec episcopacy, said a McGill University historian.

“Now there’s a new generation of bishops who are very much in tune with the needs of young people in their dioceses, and this is crucial for the new evangelization,” said John Zucchi.

A generation of bishops who were in their 70s, “many of them concerned with a 1970s and ’80s way of looking at the Church,” have retired, replaced in recent years by a new age cohort that has “rejuvenated” the episcopacy and brought fresh perspective, Zucchi said.

Quebec’s euthanasia debate must be getting horribly confusing when even a Catholic priest doesn’t know the right answer to whether the practice should be legalized.

It must be doubly so when the priest is also a former MP who knows — or should know — that euthanasia can be made legal only by amending the federal Criminal Code.

Yet here was Fr. Raymond Gravel, the one-time Bloc Quebecois MP for a Montreal-area riding, musing about whether killing the elderly, the weak and the suffering might be just what the doctor ordered for Quebec’s health care system.

What could be the largest protest ever on the streets of Montreal has full Church backing. Earth Day protesters who gather next to the Place des Arts in downtown Montreal will be backed up by Church bells ringing from most of the city’s 230 Catholic churches.

Organizers are predicting the April 22 protests will draw more people than March demonstrations against a 75-per-cent tuition hike. The student protest brought about 100,000 onto Montreal’s streets. Earth Day has a broader appeal in Quebec than the tuition fee issue, said Green Church director Norman Levesque.

OTTAWA - Quebec’s Catholic bishops and the Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF) have expressed opposition to a Quebec committee’s recommendation to allow euthanasia under limited circumstances.

“While we are pleased that members of the commission recommend greater access to palliative care for all people, we disagree with the recommendations to change laws to recognize physician-assisted dying as appropriate end-of-life care,” the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Quebec said in a statement. “Changing the terms ‘assisted suicide’ and ‘euthanasia’ to ‘physician-assisted dying’ does not change reality.”