Michael Swan

Seven years after Parliament legalized voluntary euthanasia in Canada, doctors and professors of medicine are still at odds over the definition of palliative care, funding for end-of-life care and the threat Medical Aid in Dying poses to the poor, vulnerable and isolated.

Singing Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem while Europe and possibly the world is at war isn’t a political statement, it won’t enlighten anyone about the causes of the war and the music proposes no solutions. But the humanity of voices raised to Heaven in sorrow and hope, in grief and consolation, must matter somehow.

If Pope Francis hasn’t named and shamed Vladimir Putin as aggressor and instigator of the war in Ukraine, it’s because the Holy See plays a long game in diplomacy, trying to bend the arc of history ever toward peace, the Vatican’s nuncio to Canada, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovič told an online academic conference on sustainable development that veered off into a discussion of diplomacy and Ukraine April 26.

Whether or not Pope Francis will visit one of the sites where ground-penetrating radar has revealed possible graves of former residential school students is still not known, as some Indigenous leaders continue to lobby for the Pope to visit these forgotten cemeteries that touched off a national conversation about residential schools last year.

As the writ drops for Ontario’s June 2 provincial election, the political junkies at Catholic Conscience are ready — ready to help Catholics discern their votes according to Church teaching.

All labelled and sorted, in bags and boxes, the Loretto College School chapel is crammed with stuff — all of it headed for Ukraine by way of St. Demetrius the Great Martyr Ukrainian Catholic Church in Toronto’s west end.

If the definition of “freedom fighter” is in the eyes of the beholder, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau beholds Ukrainians.

It’s early days, but Toronto’s St. Joseph’s Hospital is looking ahead to a $1-billion building spree that will give the west-end hospital an expanded emergency department, space for medical and surgical inpatient programs, new wards for mental health care, expanded intensive-care capacity and new operating rooms.

The Red River Metis went to Rome looking for the restoration of their communities, their culture and their churches.

The scope and shape of a summertime papal pilgrimage to Canada is beginning to take shape, though no official itinerary has been put forward.