TORONTO - Syria’s civil war has seen families pulling their children out of school as they escape the growing violence and persecution in the area. Many have not been back to school since the war started in 2012.

VATICAN CITY - The educational alliance among families, schools and states is broken, causing a serious situation that leads to selecting to educate only "supermen" chosen solely based on intelligence or wealth, Pope Francis said.

In the early 1940s, as a barefoot-in-summer lad in Ireland, I had my introduction to the natural environment. My family had a small store and pub on a gravel coast road in The Burren, a barren karst limestone district on Galway Bay.

My father had built a small windmill, using the dynamo from a Ford car, with a wooden wind direction indicator, on an eight-metre pole. The constant winds from the ocean kept three “wet” batteries charged, which provided enough electricity for four light bulbs and a wireless radio. Every night, my father and the neighbours from miles around gathered around the wireless to listen to the news/propaganda from the war fronts.

MANILA, Philippines - The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines tackled climate change on different fronts and also addressed a host of other issues, from equitable education to sovereign disputes at its biannual plenary session July 6-13.

QUITO, Ecuador - Education is a right and a privilege that should impart not only knowledge and skills, but also a sense of responsibility for others and for the earth, Pope Francis told representatives of Ecuadorean schools and universities.

Throughout my undergraduate experience I was actively involved with many leadership opportunities on campus. In my final year, I was blessed with the opportunity to help shape the future of my alma mater.

Now is the time Catholics need to prepare for a new urgency and a new way of thinking about our tradition and the natural world. We have to claim a new or renewed intimacy with creation.

TORONTO - The voice of parents must be heard, a determined group of parents upset with Ontario’s new sex-ed curriculum has vowed.

They gathered again at Queen’s Park, almost 2,000 of them, on June 7 to denounce Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government for moving forward with the curriculum.

VATICAN CITY - Promoting dialogue, education and strong families, the Catholic Church in Africa fulfills its mission to proclaim God's love and to work for the common good, Pope Francis said in separate meetings with the bishops of Mozambique and of Togo.

MISSISSAUGA, ONT. - The main shrine of Mississauga’s grand Fo Guang Shan Temple is typically used by Buddhists for weekly services or meditation. On May 2, however, a modest crowd of Catholics, Sikhs, Jews and Muslims joined with the Buddhists to address a situation that  all grapple with — the future.

MILAN - The Holy See's official pavilion at the Milan Expo 2015, the newest edition of the every-five-years world's fair, will be a public space of relaxation and learning.

WASHINGTON - With extreme poverty having been cut in half over the last generation — and the Millennium Development Goals target of poverty halving having been achieved five years ahead of the 2015 deadline — veterans of the global war on poverty believe it is possible that extreme poverty can be wiped out in the next 15 years.

Good news for parents with young children in Ontario — the Ministry of Education plans to spend $120 million to increase day care spaces in the province.

It is often said that a religious sister never truly retires, and Sr. Mary Ann Maxwell is living proof.

The Canadian member of the Sisters of Charity of Immaculate Conception spent her first 37 years as a nun working as both a teacher and principalin the Catholic school system, from which she had just graduated. 

Now that I am under no professional obligation to read court decisions, I generally avoid them. The turgid prose, the unctuous self-regard and the complacent sense of judicial superiority I find unpleasant and soporific.