In our corner of the country, we fancy ourselves as extremely welcoming and hospitable folk.

On Easter Sunday, I will receive my first COVID vaccine. When I heard the date, it felt like an intrusion on the day of celebrating the resurrection of Our Lord. Upon reflecting about it for a while, I decided that receiving the vaccine was a fine way to mark the liturgical feast.

The Sisters of St. Joseph, the Oblates and the Jesuits have joined with a long list of churches, unions and humanitarian organizations to ask Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to get behind an exception to international patent laws that would allow companies and countries to quickly produce cheaper, generic versions of COVID-19 vaccines.

VATICAN CITY -- The Office of Papal Charities has purchased enough doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to offer inoculations in Rome to 1,200 of “the poorest and most marginalized people who, because of their situation, are the most exposed” to the coronavirus.

A proposal aimed at getting vaccines into arms south of the equator ran up against demands for more information from rich countries, including Canada, at a Geneva meeting of the World Trade Organization committee on patent and intellectual property rights March 10 and 11.

There’s been a lot of moral/ethical debate about whether Catholics should avoid being injected with COVID-19 vaccines that were produced using cell lines derived from an abortion.

OTTAWA -- Canadian Catholics should get vaccinated against COVID-19 and they should take any vaccine that has been approved for use in Canada, Canada’s bishops said in a clarifying statement that came just days after initial advice on vaccines caused a political firestorm.

Just a little jab is no big deal for most of us, but getting COVID-19 vaccines into the arms of the most vulnerable took a trio of St. Michael’s Hospital doctors way above and way beyond — 1,200 kilometres above and beyond to the fly-in community of Neskantaga First Nation in Northern Ontario.

The approval of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for use in Canada has heightened the discussion over whether Catholics should receive the vaccine, though Church teaching remains clear that it is “morally acceptable.”

VATICAN CITY -- As a last resort, the Vatican may sanction employees who refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine for non-medical reasons, according to a new Vatican decree.

VATICAN CITY -- When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, Pope Francis warned it could make inequalities existing around the world even worse.

More than 80 million refugees and others forced from their homes by war, climate change and natural disasters need COVID-19 vaccines just as much as the rest of us, but Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny worries they’re easily overlooked.

A small Canadian startup hopes to help to bridge the COVID-19 vaccine divide between rich and poor nations.

The message was “blunt,” as he intended it to be: “The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure … and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries.”

The end of our long COVID crisis may be in sight, but until we get there churches and faith leaders still have a job to do, Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam told over 1,300 faith leaders on a Jan. 20, nationwide Zoom call.