Our small English-language parish in a borough of Montreal is hardly a hot bed of serious surprises. Recently, though, we received some rather hard news.

We were all lined up at our desks, blank forms at the ready an plenty of pens for St. Michael’s parishioners to use. 

Why won’t Pope Francis issue a formal apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s residential school system? 

Pope Francis has long held in esteem the late Cardinal Francois-Xavier Nguyen van Thuan, the archbishop of Saigon who spent 13 years in a communist prison camp, including nine years in solitary confinement.

What is peace? What does it mean in the Christian sense? 

Carl Hétu has watched the disappearance of Christians in the Middle East by the thousands. Lately, he’s begun to wonder if he’s seeing it begin in Canada, too.

There is a special type of panic that is reserved for watching your piano being maneuvered up three flights of stairs. 

There is a deeply Catholic sense of hope in standing on history’s shore watching a major wave break while sensing another building, barely visible, on the horizon.

Do you ever wonder if sometimes the world is upside down?