When Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us” in a comic strip back in 1970, he didn’t know the half of it. Pogo never heard of Twitter, attack ads, bot farms or “doing your own research.” Pogo could never have imagined a Church or society broken down into political and cultural sects caught up in perpetual rhetorical war with one another.

Repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery, endorsing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, confessing the sin of a colonizing mentality, promising to stand with Indigenous peoples when they struggle for their land and their rights and committing the Church to reconciliation with Indigenous people world-wide — all this arrived in a two-page statement issued jointly by two Vatican dicasteries as another step in the pilgrimage of penance Pope Francis undertook in Canada last summer.

Despite needing repairs topping $1 million, a recently deconsecrated landmark Acadian church has drawn extensive interest from buyers since being put up for sale by the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth late last month.

The federal government plans to spend a lot of money — $496.9 billion in 2023-24 — but the growth in federal spending projected by the latest budget hasn’t done anything for Canadian agencies that deliver humanitarian assistance and development aid in poor countries around the world.

Dozens of survivors of abuse at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s will receive compensation from the Archdiocese of St. John’s beginning in the fall.