VATICAN CITY -- A Vatican conference will gather both Christian and non-Christian historians and experts to delve deep into the history of the church in the first centuries of Christianity.

A small show full of small items on now at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto opens up a vast world of medieval mystical experience.

Greater love has no one than to lay their life down for their friends, said Jesus. 

VANCOUVER – When Deacon Pete Schumacher began working in image processing and remote sensing — a technology that analyzes images from X-rays, satellites or the ocean floor — he had no idea it would lead him to a personal encounter with Jesus.

VATICAN – As the capital of Italy and center of Catholicism, the city of Rome must work with the Catholic Church to preserve and defend its rich historical and spiritual traditions, Pope Francis said.

Historian Robert Ventresca is already planning visits to Rome sometime after March 2, 2020, where he will immerse himself in hundreds of thousands of letters, cables and speeches covering the papacy of Pius XII from 1939 to 1958.

VATICAN – Declaring that the Catholic Church is unafraid of history, Pope Francis announced that documents in the Vatican Secret Archives relating to the wartime pontificate of Pope Pius XII will be open to scholars in 2020.

JERUSALEM – Bishops from North America, Europe and South Africa who joined this year's Holy Land Coordination reiterated their solidarity with all of Israel's Christians and called for their equal inclusion in Israeli society.

VATICAN – Pope Francis said young men and women today need to learn from their elders what led to the great wars of the 20th century so "they won't fall for the same mistake."

Construction crews have been busy completing a $4-million renovation of 80-year-old Brennan Hall in the centre of the University of St. Michael’sCollege, but there’s more to what’s happening on campus than the crack of hammers and the whirr of electric drills, insists the college’s new president.

EDMONTON – Betty Letendre recalls a time when Indigenous elders didn’t want to come into Edmonton, feeling tired of the discrimination and misconceptions that they faced on a daily basis. 

VATICAN – A radical program of reform addressing the widespread problem of abusive clergy and negligent superiors in the 11th century holds some essential insights and lessons for the church today, a church historian has said.

VATICAN – A leading expert on the cloth believed to be the burial shroud of Jesus dismissed a new study claiming that blood patterns on the shroud are not consistent with those left by a crucified person.

Just four months after being released from a South African prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela, the country’s future president, was in the midst of an international tour, visiting countries that had supported the long fight for his release and against South Africa’s apartheid policies. Canada was one of those stops, as reported by Tonia Desiato in The Register of June 30, 1990.

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Conscience of a Nation: Jesuits in English Canada (1842-2016), Jesuit History Series vol. 3., edited by Jacques Monet, S.J. (Novalis, softcover, 224 pages, $34.95)