Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta on Monday morning. In remarks to the faithful following the Readings of the Day, the Holy Father focused on the threefold theme of the dynamic unity in Christian life, the signs of which are living memory, the prophetic spirit, and the sure horizon of hope.

In recent decades Fort McMurray and the oil industry it symbolizes has divided Canadians. The Alberta oil hub was regarded as either a badge of national prosperity or symbol of ecological disgrace. The arguments were fierce.

Pope Francis said on Friday that a Christian does not anesthetize or numb pain but lives through it in the hope that God will give us a joy that nobody can take away. That was the key message of the Pope’s homily at his morning Mass celebrated in the Santa Marta residence.

Christian hope is a humble and strong virtue that supports us, so that we do not drown under the many difficulties we face in life. That was Pope Francis’ message at the morning Mass at the Casa Santa Marta. The Pope said that hope in the Lord never disappoints us; it’s a font of joy and peace in our hearts.

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It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t fear. It was truth that made Archbishop Philip Pocock stand up and say no.

The morning of March 20, 1976 Toronto discovered the Catholic Church wasn’t buying the city’s new notion of progress. 

Living alongside Canada's First Nations people is a ministry of highs and heartaches for Archbishop Murray Chatlain.

And the heartache comes to the forefront at times like now, highlighted by a suicide crisis that has struck the First Nations’ community of Cross Lake, Man.

Many of us, I am sure, have been inspired by the movie Of Gods and Men, the story of a group of Trappist monks who, after making a painful decision not to flee from the violence in Algeria in the 1990s, are eventually martyred by Islamic extremists in 1996. Recently, I was much inspired by reading the diaries of one of those monks, Christophe Lebreton. Published under the title Born from the Gaze of God, The Tibhirine Journal of a Martyr Monk, his diaries chronicle the last three years of his life and give us an insight into his, and his community’s, decision to remain in Algeria in the face of almost certain death. 

VATICAN CITY - There is no saint without a past and no sinner without a future, Pope Francis said in his morning Mass.

VATICAN CITY - Welcoming thousands of migrants and refugees to the Vatican for their own Year of Mercy celebration, Pope Francis urged them to resist everything that would rob them of hope and joy.

VATICAN CITY - Christmas is a reminder that through the birth of Christ, hope and peace are possible and that only through his grace can humanity find peaceful solutions to the world's most difficult problems, Pope Francis said.

BEIRUT - Catholic patriarchs from the Middle East encouraged their trouble people to find inner peace at Christmas and urged the world to remember them.

Flying back to Rome on Nov. 30 after a six-day “pilgrimage of peace” as an “apostle of hope,” Pope Francis said he was surprised by Africa.

NEW YORK - Pope Francis’ appeal to Congress on behalf of migrants has heartened New Yorkers, none more so that Franciscan Father Julian Jagudilla, director of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi’s Migrant Centre.

SANTIAGO, Cuba - A key task of a traveling pope is to confirm his brothers and sisters in the faith. For Pope Francis in Cuba, that ministry took on added importance as Cuba and its people stand on the threshold of potentially epochal change.