Canada’s last surviving Second Vatican Council father has died. Victoria Bishop Emeritus Remi De Roo was 97 years old when he reached his eternal rest on Feb. 1.

While social conservatives crow over the demise of Erin O’Toole and begin trying to draft rookie MP Leslyn Lewis to take another run at the Conservative Party leadership, Liberals and other left-of-centre parties are more quietly smiling, political analysts have told The Catholic Register.

What might be called the messy, Ukrainian spirituality of democracy is threatened by more than 100,000 Russian troops on the border and a propaganda war that pretends Ukrainians and Russians are all part of one Orthodox and Slavic nation, according to the founder of the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies in Toronto.

A new, independent registered charity created to disburse $30 million Canadian Catholics will raise over the next five years is a chance to forge new relationships between the Church and Indigenous Canadians, according to Odawa/Ojibway elder Rosella Kinoshameg.

More than two dozen Indigenous delegates, accompanied by a handful of Canadian bishops, are once again on their way to meeting Pope Francis in the last week of March.

Laudato Si’ was groundbreaking in 2015, but now the Canadian Church on Feb. 12 will break ground on a new effort to take up Pope Francis’ challenge to care for the planet we all share.

Canadian bishops and religious orders are cheering a new, Indigenous-led transitional committee that will push Ottawa a little closer to answering the 94 Calls to Action from the 2015 final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.