MONTREAL – Fr. Irénée Beaubien, the Jesuit who founded what is believed to be the world’s first centre for ecumenism, is being remembered as a progressive theologian and a pioneer.

There was a time when Catholics, Protestants and other Christian denominations were largely isolated from each other.

How difficult is human relationship! How glorious, how deeply and universally sought-after it is! Our hunger for relationship can draw out the best and the worst in us. The deepest wrestling is with one another, in relationship — be it person to person, nation to nation, or Church to Church.  

Pope Francis leaves on Monday (Oct. 31) for an overnight trip to Sweden, a historically Protestant country that today is one of the most secular in the world.

ASSISI, Italy – Churches that are not reconciled with one another weaken the experience of mercy that unites believers to God and with each other, Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury said.

NAIROBI, Kenya - Pope Francis’ announcement that he will visit East and Central Africa in November has resounded in churches here, with Catholic bishops greeting it as an opportunity to boost the faith in the region.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis said he will dedicate his one-day visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina to encouraging a minority Catholic community in the faith, fostering ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, and calling for peace and harmony after the devastations of war.

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.

NEW YORK - Catholics and Jews risk losing their hard-won interfaith amity if they take ecumenism for granted and fail to pass it along to a new generation of seminarians and laity, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York said in an address at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

TORONTO - In a world where the Islamic State threatens religious minorities in the Middle East, Boko Haram kidnaps Christian girls in Nigeria, Jews worldwide are forced to defend the existence of Israel, it might be said that interfaith relations are no walk in the park.

VATICAN CITY - The dignity of human life, family, marriage and sexuality are "urgent" issues that "cannot be silenced or ignored for fear" of threatening ecumenical achievements, said Pope Francis during an audience with Archbishop Antje Jackelen of Uppsala, Sweden.

We live inside a world and inside religions that are too given to disrespect and violence. Virtually every newscast documents the prevalence of disrespect and violence done in the name of religion, disrespect done for the sake of God (strange as that expression may seem). Invariably those acting in this way see their actions, justified by sacred cause.

VATICAN CITY - Rome's retired chief rabbi, who played a key role in fostering closer ties between Jews and Catholics, died April 19 at the age of 99.

Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte of Montreal, one of the most popular Quebeckers alive even as the province grew more decidedly secular, has entered the last stage of his life.

CANTERBURY, England - Tens of thousands of people in Leicester — England’s most religiously diverse city — are getting ready to honour the memory of a long-despised English king with a ceremony that testifies to the already warm relationship between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.