A pilgrimage is a source of spiritual enrichment, and the dream of a lifetime for many Catholics. And Andreia Lopo, 47, takes “pure delight,” as she says, in helping to make that dream come true.

A report launched Nov. 21 in the Canadian parliament by Benedict Rogers, the British co-founder and chief executive of Hong Kong Watch, raised several red flags about the insidious but dangerous erosion of religious freedom in Hong Kong.

Despite a looming threat of being displaced forever from the Holy Land, the Christian community in Gaza is staying faithful to its commitment to help compatriots in facing an increasingly serious humanitarian crisis as war consumes all around them.

In a media world that portrays the Israel-Palestine conflict as simple hostility between people of the Judaic and Muslim faiths, the Christian presence in Palestine is minimized or erased.

Patriarchs and heads of all the churches in Jerusalem have issued an urgent appeal to Israel and the international community to open a humanitarian corridor, to assist people caught in what many fear is an imminent humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip.  

In a chilling reminder of the Nazi blitzkrieg that ripped through Europe in the 1940s, Azerbaijan, with a lightning military offensive on Sept. 19, dealt a fatal blow to Artsakh (also called Nagorno Karabakh), a disputed territory within its boundaries, sending almost all of its 120,000 Christian Armenians into forced exile.

As Ottawa’s Saint Paul University, celebrates its 175th anniversary this year, Chantal Beauvais, its first female Rector, simultaneously exemplifies its Catholic identity, historical values and its face of change.

In the pre-dawn hours of yet another tranquil Ottawa morning — Sept. 19 — my cell phone buzzed. With a sense of foreboding and apprehension I speed-read the message that popped up.

Local Canadian Armenians with loved ones in the land-locked territory of Artsakh, are rallying to galvanize the international community over what experts, activists and residents identify as an unfolding genocide.