VATICAN CITY -- Adam Piekarski, a homeless man from Lódz, Poland, never imagined that the sketches he would draw in his free time while waiting for the public showers near Bernini’s Colonnade would lead to the opportunity of a lifetime.

It’s coming on Christmas and the Halifax-Yarmouth archdiocese is writing its own inspirational story of Bethlehem.

The spirit of Christmas giving arrived early this year in Edmonton, with the St. Joseph’s College Catholic Students’ Association at the University of Alberta collecting clothing to keep dozens of homeless people a little warmer this winter.

Halifax parishes are working to fight homelessness by offering church property as the sites for emergency shelters to house those in need.

Dollar-a-meal lunches and suppers are back on at St. Francis Table in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood come Sept. 1, when there will be fully vaccinated cooks and wait staff ready to serve up meals to sit-down customers inside the restaurant.

One of my favourite sights when driving along the increasingly paved landscape of Calgary is an ospreys’ nest that has been built atop the metal girder that supports a ubiquitous piece of highway signage. My children and I have marvelled for many years at the site of this large nest, perched out in the open on unprotected steel, which has supported generations of fledgling hawks. So imagine my disappointment driving past the spot recently only to discover that workers had covered the nest with a wooden pyramid. It is impossible not to personify the forlorn hawk, who sat miserably beside this intervention, appearing lost and confused.

The tents in city parks, men and women gathered under Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway, lean-tos and sleeping bags scattered through ravines, camp fires among the alder trees near the beaches — none of this is new to Toronto. But it has become a lot more visible since COVID came to town.

A joint project by the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (COH) and A Way Home Canada — and the slate of projects earmarked for the future — aims to ensure their jointly developed framework to prevent youth homelessness remains an ever-living document.

Ontario is on track to miss its goal of ending chronic homelessness by 2025, according to a new report from the province’s Financial Accountability Office, and still lacks a plan to reach that goal.

A recent report shows that the Good Shepherd’s Youth Reconnect (YR) program has reduced the number of at-risk Hamilton, Ont., youth accessing shelter and other emergency services.

A few weeks ago, I was on an intimate online call with one of our political leaders. Well, when I say it was an intimate call, it was intimate in the way a private audience with the Pope is intimate, namely there were as many people on the call as the bandwidth could support.

The journey home has gotten a little easier for some of Toronto’s 8,500 homeless people in shelters and out on the street any given night.

It was a different time and a different crisis, but in the small village of Bronte, Ont., work was hard to come by in the early 1950s.

CALGARY -- A few weeks ago, Jamie Hunka sat at a desk in one of The Mustard Seed’s support centres helping job seekers write resumes and master interviewing skills.

EDMONTON -- It started with Edmonton churches asking “How can we help?”