KINGSTON, ONT. - A humble, prayerful and dedicated priest, Msgr. Tom Raby was “the salt of the earth” who influenced countless lives as a pastor and writer, a crowded church heard at his funeral Mass.

The chemical weapons massacre that killed 1,429 Syrians, mostly civilians, many of them children, was a monstrous act. “Abhorrent and repugnant,” said Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. “A moral obscenity,” said U.S. President Barack Obama.

On the feast of St. Augustine 100 years ago the doors to the Scarborough seminary named in the saint’s honour officially swung open to welcome 51 aspiring priests into this new masterpiece of the Canadian Church.

Egypt’s dance with democracy has become a tragic failure. The optimism of the Arab Spring movement has been lost beneath a flow of blood that may yet carry the nation to all-out civil war.

The Canadian Medical Association refers to its general meeting as “the parliament of Canadian medicine” because the annual assembly is where doctors debate policies and health issues that affect the nation.

“Who am I to judge?”

Pope Francis is the first pope from Latin America and he ensured South America was the destination for his first foreign trip. So it was no surprise that the Argentine Pope was welcomed to World Youth Day in Brazil by huge, adoring crowds who brought his motorcade to a standstill.

On July 5 Pope Francis released his first encyclical, a newsworthy event in itself, but then he knocked himself from the headlines by approving the sainthood causes of two of his renowned predecessors. If the rapid-fire announcements seemed unusual, well, that should come as no surprise from a Pope who keeps doing things his way.

Sometimes the obvious needs to be stated: euthanasia is homicide.

The morning after becoming Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis checked out of his hotel by paying his own bill and then calmly strolled into his new life. It was a novel way to launch a papacy but, then, over his first 100 days the new Pope has been making novelty commonplace.