Conclave

Touch anyone and you touch grief, the grief of losing someone beloved. There’s grief, and there’s the grief born of a tragic death such as from suicide. Socially, and even as a Church, we often don’t know how to respond.

The months leading up to the now concluded first phase of the Synod on Synodality were marked by anticipation and anxiety in influential Catholic circles. While the majority of Catholics might remain perplexed or indifferent to the Synod, invested Catholics saw change on the horizon.

A new Health Canada report revealed the number of euthanasia deaths in 2022 was 13,241, 31.2-per-cent higher than the 10,092 Canadians who requested assisted suicide in 2021.

Canada’s military ordinariate is pleased that the Chaplain General has put a temporary pause on the new Public Reflection Policy that would have prohibited overtly religious language by chaplains at Remembrance Day ceremonies.

Catholics in Bathurst, N.B., who have been without a bishop since last year, are welcoming a new shepherd.

A report summarizing discussions at the assembly of the Synod of Bishops said the church may need more welcoming pastoral approaches, especially to people who feel excluded, but also acknowledged fears of betraying traditional church teachings and practices.

On the 800th anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi setting up the first Nativity scene, the creche in St. Peter's Square in 2023 will come from the Diocese of Rieti, Italy, and pay tribute to the scene set up in the diocese in 1223.

The day after Pope Francis called for a cease-fire in the Holy Land, his foreign minister spoke by phone with the foreign minister of Iran, "reiterating the absolute need to avoid escalating the conflict," the Vatican press office said.

When Fred Lafontaine moved to Toronto in 1945, he had $19 in his pocket and was in search of a job. A builder by trade, he had left his family’s farm in La Sarre, Que., which had just been enveloped by more than a foot of snow the night before.

In his second year as an offensive tackle for the Seattle Seahawks, Abraham “Abe” Lucas is living his childhood dream. Even so, it’s faith, not football, that’s the most important thing for this self-described “hard-core Catholic.”