This past fall, my mother received a call from the care home in Yorkton, Sask., where her eldest sister was a resident. My mother was informed that her sister had taken a turn in health and there likely wasn’t much time left. 

Jesuit Fr. Bill Ryan was never going to settle for a small, quiet, unobtrusive, private faith. For the Harvard-educated economist any notion that God was real, that God intends justice, must be met with real, concrete and public action.

MONTREAL - Fr. Gerald Pocock, who died Sept. 4 in Ottawa at age 92, was a gregarious Roman Catholic chaplain at Montreal’s St. Mary’s Hospital in 1969 when he befriended American jazz legend Duke Ellington.

OTTAWA – A Catholic woman has filed a complaint with a Quebec health agency alleging that her husband was denied antibiotics to treat a bladder infection after doctors determined it was better to let him die because he had cancer.

Pope Francis offered his condolences and his prayers to the people of Sierra Leone after flooding and a major mudslide Aug. 14 led to the deaths of hundreds of people and displaced thousands.

Nick Volk was a fighter who chose sides in the battlefield of Toronto’s pricey real estate market. The Harvard-educated gentleman who began his career in the American foreign service chose the side of the poor.

Just a year after his extraordinary ordination and while celebrating a friend’s ordination in British Columbia, Fr. Trevor Plug has died.

YAOUNDE, Cameroon – Catholic bishops in Cameroon said a bishop whose body was pulled from a river in early June did not commit suicide, but was murdered.

“I go on ahead to prepare a place for you!” Jesus speaks those words to His disciples on the eve of His death as He sits at table with them and senses their sadness as they grapple with His dying, His going away.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser will be a leader at the 2017 National Catholic Mission, addressing the theme “Our final gift,” based on Fr. Henri Nouwen’s thesis that death can be our final gift to others. Fr. Rolheiser addressed that concept in a 2001 column reprinted here with his blessing.

CHUR, Switzerland – A Swiss bishop has instructed Catholic priests not to give last rites to people suspected of seeking assisted suicide, following a sharp rise in the practice in his country.

Pope Francis said death is not to be feared if we are faithful to the Lord but warned against being trapped into basing our lives around superficial things that are not transcendent as though we never had to die. He was speaking at his Mass celebrated on Tuesday morning in the chapel of the Santa Marta residence.

TORONTO – Cultural critic, intellectual pilgrim and fearless explorer of his own soul, John Bentley Mays died suddenly and peacefully while walking with friend and fellow-writer Philip Marchand Sept. 19.

VATICAN CITY – Using the word "genocide" to describe the persecution of Christians in the Middle East risks downplaying the courage and witness of those who boldly profess faith in Jesus Christ even in the face of death, Pope Francis said.