Michael Swan

As a general strike swept across Myanmar — three weeks after a Feb. 1 military coup prevented a new, elected government from taking office — a Toronto-based Kachin Catholic activist found herself praying for the safety of her family at home in the Southeast Asian country. 

A sneak peak at a forthcoming guide to reconciliation between Indigenous Canadians and the rest of us has Toronto Catholic District School Board Indigenous education central resource teacher Frank Pio excited about the good it might do in high school classrooms.

If going to Sunday morning Mass seems tantalizingly near and yet far as you watch your parish struggle to produce a weekly liturgy on Facebook or YouTube, imagine what it has been like for kids to be told to sit quietly and watch a TV Mass.

In announcing another reorganization and consolidation of parishes, Quebec City Archbishop Cardinal Gérald Lacroix sought to focus the conversation on “our ability to fulfill our essential mission.”

Forty days in the desert — that’s our usual starting point for Lent. But we would prefer to choose our desert, and most years we do. We decide what we will give up for Lent. We choose spiritual reading, take on volunteering and charitable acts, memorize a new prayer, set aside time for meditation. Diligent Catholics like to plan our desert experience.

This year Development and Peace knows what it’s up against. 

COVID has not cancelled Lent, nor Ash Wednesday, though a few things will feel a little different.

More than 80 million refugees and others forced from their homes by war, climate change and natural disasters need COVID-19 vaccines just as much as the rest of us, but Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny worries they’re easily overlooked.

A small Canadian startup hopes to help to bridge the COVID-19 vaccine divide between rich and poor nations.

The head of the UN World Food Program warned Pope Francis in a Jan. 28 meeting at the Vatican that famine looms in a number of countries as COVID-19 ravages communities around the world