Conclave

Dozens of survivors of abuse at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s will receive compensation from the Archdiocese of St. John’s beginning in the fall.

Indigenous Catholics, along with U.S. and Canadian bishops, are welcoming the Vatican's repudiation of a legal and political doctrine by which European colonial powers and North American governments historically seized lands from Indigenous peoples -- while stressing there is more work to be done in healing Catholic-Indigenous relations.

In 1936, English novelist Evelyn Waugh published a short biography of Edmund Campion, English priest and martyr. When an American edition of the book was published 10 years later, Waugh wrote in the preface, “We are nearer Campion than when I wrote of him.” 

Politics at the best of times can make anyone’s blood boil, from the mundane local ordinances enforced by your local council right up to the big decisions that affect every-day life, which are of extreme importance to most, especially peoples’ pocketbooks. And there is no “right” side, everyone has their own opinion. Hence, politics, we are told, is one of those thing to never be brought up in polite company (alongside religion of course).

The Pope’s prayer intention for March 2023 was that victims of abuse find within the Church herself a concrete response to their pain and suffering. One organization already responding to such pain by building spiritual bridges between victims/survivors of clergy sexual abuse and the general Church community is Awake Milwaukee (Awake).

When a new bishop is appointed, people naturally ask, “Who is he? Where does he come from? What’s his story? What makes him tick?” said Toronto’s new archbishop at his installation Mass March 25. 

For his own episcopal motto Archbishop Francis Leo adopted the Latin phrase Quodcumque Dixerit Facite (in English: Do whatever He tells you) — words taken from the Gospel according to St. John, by which the Evangelist illustrates the episode known as “the wedding at Cana,” an account steeped in exquisite and profound symbolism, and rich in spiritual and pastoral teachings. 

Installing a new bishop is a very big deal. And every big deal in a Catholic diocese calls for a big liturgy.

More than 24 hours after he entered the hospital, Pope Francis' doctors reported a "marked improvement" in his condition, which they attributed to treatment with intravenous antibiotics.

The Catholic Church formally "repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political 'doctrine of discovery,'" a Vatican statement said.