Michael Swan

The revolution will not happen on TV, on Twitter or on TikTok. A transformed Church cannot be effected by a meme. So John Dorner isn’t watching his newsfeed, waiting for a revolution to hold the Church accountable for caring for creation. He is acting. He has reached that point in life where he can see the change that must outlive him.

Newly elected Catholic Women’s League president Fran Lucas has a long list of hopes and dreams for Canada’s largest women’s organization, but the most immediate item on her wish list is “to come back to something as close as possible to the normal we once knew.”

Canada’s commitment to take in 20,000 new Afghan refugees looks pretty generous compared to Great Britain’s (population 66 million) pledge to take in 20,000 over five years or the United States’ (population 328 million) promise to welcome 30,000. But what happens to them once they get here?

The Season of Creation, on Sept. 1 through to the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi Oct. 4, has the wholehearted support of Canada’s bishops, said Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops spokesperson Lisa Gall.

In a quick, COVID-constrained, snap federal election, the Archdiocese of Toronto has decided against trying to stage the kind of big, public, regional all-candidates event that was a highlight of the 2019 election campaign.

As fully vaccinated, real-life students abandon their Zoom classrooms and filter back onto the University of St. Michael’s College campus, a new campus minister will be ready to provide face-to-face encounters of the spiritual kind.

Canadians have a lot to think about before the Sept. 20 election. But for Catholics, it’s getting harder to be political and to contribute to public debate, says the author of a brand-new book about faith and politics in Canada.

Catholic refugee sponsors are ready and eager to help Ottawa resettle 20,000 Afghan refugees, but three weeks after the federal government announced the new refugee resettlement target the sponsors are still waiting to learn when, how and how many refugees they can welcome.

When the 2010 earthquake hit Haiti, Jesuit Fr. Jean Francky went with his brother novices out onto the streets of Dumay, on the outskirts of Port au Prince. That night, the young religious men began digging through rubble with their bare hands.

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.