News/Canada

If Pope Francis is going to broaden or deepen the apology he offered April 1 in Rome, then it’s going to happen at Maskwacis, 70 kilometres south of Edmonton, site of one of the largest Indian residential schools in Canada.

One year ago, the Archdiocese of Vancouver and the White Rock Pride Society were at loggerheads, waiting for a hearing before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal as adversaries in a dispute over a church hall rental that pitted religious rights against the human rights code’s anti-discrimination clause.

A First Nations group of residential school survivors has publicly put forward specific wording for a papal apology widely expected in Canada in July.  

Honouring Toronto’s Cardinal Thomas Collins for the thousands of refugees he has brought to Canada came quite naturally to the community at the Chaldean Catholic Cathedral of the Good Shepherd.

Pope Francis’ commitment to Indigenous people to visit Canada “where I will be able better to express to you my closeness” now has the concrete form of an official itinerary.

In the past two months, courts gave the go-ahead for class-action lawsuits involving 100 plaintiffs alleging sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Quebec and the Diocese of St. Hyacinthe near Montreal.

The iconic Basilica Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in St. John’s, Nfld., is poised to remain a sacred place of worship for Catholics for years to come.

Compelling new research out of Cardus and the Angus Reid Institute should encourage Canadian religious leaders to take a deeper look at why some people remain religiously faithful and why others do not, says Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett.