I want to focus on a single word, one that is loaded with enough meaning to sway life or death decisions.

OTTAWA – As the summer barbecue season begins, the Liberal government received mixed reviews near the midway point of its electoral mandate.

LONDON, England – Legal efforts to bar the parents of a British baby born with a disabling medical condition from seeking treatment overseas are based on deep ethical errors, a Catholic expert in medical ethics has warned.

One year, perhaps 2,000 deaths and several unresolved issues.

In the year since state-sanctioned, medicalized suicide became legal on June 17, 2016, doctors have deliberately caused the death of their patients at a rate of about three a day.

It’s been one year since terminally ill Canadians have been legally free to choose medical intervention to end their lives. In that time, some 1,400 people have chosen assisted suicide.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall when Pope Francis welcomes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a papal audience in coming days.

In a recent Toronto Sun column, John Snobelen had four wise, albeit chilling, watch words for those in the not-for-profit world. They are: “The atrophy of purpose.”

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled, Parliament has legislated and provinces have set up new systems. For most Canadians the assisted suicide debate is last year’s news story. But Cardinal Gerhard Müller, head of the Catholic Church’s theological watchdog-agency, begs to differ.

OTTAWA — Cardinal Thomas Collins told the 20th National March for Life on May 11 euthanasia and the crushing of conscience rights “brings shame to our country.”

MANCHESTER, England – The Vatican is investigating the decision of a group of psychiatric care centres run by a Catholic religious order in Belgium to permit doctors to perform euthanasia of "nonterminal" mentally ill patients on its premises.

In mid-April The Globe & Mail gave two days of coverage to the suicide of Adam Maier-Clayton, just 27 years old. He lived for years with a variety of psychiatric disorders and unremitting pain. There is no doubt he knew suffering.

BRUSSELS, Belgium – Following a decision by the board of several Belgian Catholic psychiatric hospitals to start performing euthanasia, the religious brothers who operate the hospitals said the policy change is unacceptable and cannot be implemented.

OTTAWA – A government-funded home-care agency serving the Ottawa area is facilitating end-of-life services for people seeking to be euthanized in their home.

The pledge was buried deep within the federal budget and delivered almost as an afterthought. Still, it is encouraging to see the Liberals keeping a 2015 election promise on palliative care.