Anna Farrow

Anna Farrow

My sister is a Shabbat-observing Orthodox Jew. When I saw the news trickling out of Israel on Saturday morning, I knew I wouldn’t be able to check in with her until that night. Her phone is off from Friday evening until Saturday sundown. Then I remembered that it was Simchat Torah, and that observant Jews in the U.S. wouldn’t be turning their phones back on until Sunday evening.

In a little corner of the cavernous basement of Mary Queen of the World Cathedral in Montreal, Fr. Jean-Pierre Couturier has spent every Thursday of the last 25 years mending shoes.

An enduring trope in the culture wars is that pro-life advocates care only for the fetus and nothing for the women and children at the centre of abortion debates. Critics point fingers, often literally, alleging that political pro-life wrangling always trumps the physical and spiritual care of women.

Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP, Rector Magnificus of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, brought a lot of theology and a little bit of bluegrass to McGill University when he delivered the 2023 Birks Lectures.

September 28, 2023

Beauty matters

There’s a dynamism in engaging with the natural world, poet Maya Clubine believes.

With the purchase of a new property in 2021 and ambitious plans for development, Canadian Jesuits are hoping to buck the trend of closures and contraction experienced by Quebec Catholic institutions over the past 50 years.

In June of this year, I wrote an article for The Catholic Register on the life and ministry of Fr. Charles Robert (Rob) Brennan, SJ. At the time, Fr. Rob was in palliative care at the Jesuit residence in Pickering, Ont. In my opening sentence, I noted that in 2020 he had said that the only vocational aspiration that remained to him was a “good death.” As it turns out, his prayers, and the prayers of his many friends, were answered and Fr. Rob enjoyed, indeed truly relished, several months’ worth of dying.

September 13, 2023

Red Mass resurrected

A group of 60 jurists, notaries and law students gathered at the Sacred Heart Chapel in Montreal’s historic Notre-Dame Basilica on Sept. 7 to attend the first Red Mass organized by the newly formed Société Saint-Yves de Montréal.

September 8, 2023

Taking faith to the bank

As Canadians deal with the pressures of a financial crisis, there is opportunity to be found in Catholic values

Four years ago, Aaron Semple was in a sober-living facility in Ontario, recovering from a decades-old addiction to drugs, and searching for the tools he needed to construct a new, sober life. His decision to sign up for a retreat inspired by the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises led Semple to a faith community, friendship and a move to Montreal to help bring that retreat-experience to others.