Michael Swan

When the Martyrs’ Shrine community in Midland, Ont. — Jesuits and benefactors — gets together Sept. 24 to celebrate Mass with retired Ottawa Archbishop Terence Prendergast, it will celebrate St. Jean de Brebeuf and his companions in a whole new context.

A faithful voice in Canadian politics lives on. At 95, former Senator Lois Wilson is still campaigning, not for herself or for a political party but for human rights, for a guaranteed livable income, for a full and generous welcome to refugees, for preservation of the natural world which has been central to her life of prayer.

After years of internal struggle and uncertainty, the Knights of Malta have a new papal mandate, a new constitution, a new legal code and a Canadian lawyer seeing the whole process to completion at an extraordinary general chapter of the sovereign lay religious order in the new year.

For Catholics who have for years heard Mary’s first words in the Gospel of Luke as the defining moment of her life, it may seem the Pope is flipping the script on the Lord’s mother.

After two years of elaborate, COVID-enforced Zoom calls, Canada’s bishops will see each other face-to-face again at this year’s plenary meetings Sept. 26 to 29 in Cornwall, Ont.

With one-third of Pakistan underwater, millions on the move, waterborne illnesses, diarrhea, lost crops, lost roads and bridges and electricity infrastructure, the humanitarian challenge is immense, said Scott Braunschweig.

Canadians want a synodal Church, a listening Church, an active Church, a welcoming Church, a hopeful Church, according to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ “National Synthesis.”

A date for a new papal statement on the Doctrine of Discovery, promised by Pope Francis on his way home from Canada to Rome, has not been announced. But whenever it happens it will address core concerns of Indigenous people in Canada and in many other parts of the world.

Canadians are getting in on a 30-year-old Vatican project to recast our thinking, our politics and our way of life. On a Sept. 17 Zoom call, a small group will launch the Canadian chapter of Centesimus Annus-Pro Pontifice, a lay-led organization created by St. Pope John Paul II in the Vatican.

Canada’s bishops want to engage with a new National Council for Reconciliation that Ottawa lawmakers plan to set up this fall.