Features/Features

The Easter Sunday fire quickly consumed the coummunity church. In the charred remains, a picture of St. Kateri Tekakwitha somehow survived, as well as a Mary statue.

Portrait of St. Kateri survives devastating church fire on Easter Sunday

By Wendy-Ann Clarke, The Catholic Register

Amidst the rubble left by the fire that consumed St. Theresa Point Catholic Church on Easter Sunday laid a picture of St. Kateri Tekakwitha almost completely intact.

Some of the staff at Presentation Manor pose in front of a sign that says it all about the people that worked at keeping residents safe. About 100 people work at Presentation Manor.

Presentation Manor retirement home endures pandemic with strong community

By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register

The day Presentation Manor went into lockdown for COVID-19 was Charles Hendrick’s birthday, but he wasn’t there to celebrate. He had died the previous October of pancreatic cancer.

This massive painting of the crucifixion, along with more than a dozen scenes from Jesus’ life, is at the Isenheim monastery near Colmar, Germany, where those near death came to make a full confession in preparing for a good death in pre-Reformation Europe.

Confronting death: Jesus’ last words open us up to our vulnerability, frailty

By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register

Thinking about a horrible death doesn’t come naturally to 21st-century humans, even on Good Friday.

Connie Leon looks over The Last Supper wood relief carving she donated to St. Joseph’s Morrow Park Catholic Secondary School.

The Last Supper artwork finds familiar home

By Wendy-Ann Clarke, The Catholic Register

After decades hanging in Connie Leon’s dining room, a compelling depiction of The Last Supper has found a new home at St. Joseph Morrow Park Catholic Secondary School.

The annual Good Friday procession through Toronto’s Little Italy has been cancelled for the second straight year due to COVID-19.

Good Friday procession on hiatus for second year

By Quinton Amundson, The Catholic Register

The annual Good Friday procession that brings the Stations of the Cross to life in the streets of Toronto’s Little Italy has been cancelled for the second straight year due to COVID-19.

The Church has an example of how to respond to COVID publicly and liturgically in Pope Francis who, in the depths of Italy’s COVID crisis last April, stood alone in a rain-soaked St. Peter’s Square, crosier in hand, praying for mercy urbi et orbi — for the city and the world.

With a year of COVID there will be plenty of reasons to seek healing in liturgy

By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register

A year into COVID and Martyrs’ Shrine director Fr. Michael Knox is looking ahead, imagining how we might pray after the pandemic comes to an end.

It’s been a year since life as we knew it came to a screeching halt. Our churches closed, then reopened with strict capacity limits, only to close again in much of Canada.

A year of COVID — a time of learning and caring

By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register

Fr. Wilson Andrade’s smile is as broad, his laugh as ready and his intense interest in people as alive as it ever was. But he confesses that a year of lockdowns, online Masses and separation from his St. Ann’s parishioners in Toronto’s East Chinatown neighbourhood hasn’t been easy.