The little hospice that refused to give in to the steamrolling politics of so-called “medical assistance in dying” is no more.

Think back a year ago … to an Easter Sunday that reverberated with fear and anxiety as the world’s people tried to grasp the enormity of COVID-19.

With 60 “yea” votes in the Senate, Bill C-7 took its final step before becoming law on March 17, widening the expressway of death that Canada has been travelling since 2016.

There’s been a lot of moral/ethical debate about whether Catholics should avoid being injected with COVID-19 vaccines that were produced using cell lines derived from an abortion.

How many times over the past year have you heard the phrases “getting back to normal” and “putting COVID-19 behind us”?

Two years after his election to the papacy, Pope Francis was asked about how long his pontificate might last. “I have the feeling that my pontificate will be short,” he said. “Four or five years. I don’t know, or two, three.”

As Canada continues to hurtle toward being a world leader in helping people commit suicide, let us spare a moment to consider an alternative: Giving people a reason to live.

It has been 15 months since Pope Francis made a pastoral trip outside Italy and that by itself makes his March 5-8 mission to Iraq newsworthy. But there’s much more at stake here than dipping his toe into foreign waters for apostolic purposes.

There are few more heartwarming scenes than grandparents hugging their grandkids, moments of unconditional love expressed in an embrace between old and young.

The World Day of the Sick, first proclaimed by St. Pope John Paul II in 1992, is aligned with three actions: praying for the ill, responding to those in pain, and honouring health care workers and caregivers.