European Politics

While proponents on either side will debate just how many people were drawn to last month’s 1 Million March 4 Children, the one thing that is clear is the nationwide demonstrations have got people talking.

In a chilling reminder of the Nazi blitzkrieg that ripped through Europe in the 1940s, Azerbaijan, with a lightning military offensive on Sept. 19, dealt a fatal blow to Artsakh (also called Nagorno Karabakh), a disputed territory within its boundaries, sending almost all of its 120,000 Christian Armenians into forced exile.

We applaud and magnify the sombre yet vital words the good people of Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Toronto issued in the aftermath of last weekend’s heart-wrenching atrocities in the Holy Land.

Relative to its population, Canada is punching above its weight at the Synod on Synodality, currently in its second week in Rome.

With the completion of the opening days of the Synod on Synodality having taken place in Rome, a few observations can be offered.

My sister is a Shabbat-observing Orthodox Jew. When I saw the news trickling out of Israel on Saturday morning, I knew I wouldn’t be able to check in with her until that night. Her phone is off from Friday evening until Saturday sundown. Then I remembered that it was Simchat Torah, and that observant Jews in the U.S. wouldn’t be turning their phones back on until Sunday evening.

Pilgrims who were in Israel following a surprise terrorist attack by Hamas terrorists against civilian communities in southern Israel Oct. 7 lit candles and said prayers of peace at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as fighting continued in southern Israel.

The era of divisive debate about Pope Pius XII has been left behind, and now Catholics and Jews, historians and theologians must take up serious and collaborative study, said the co-organizer of a major conference looking at the early results of new research into the wartime pontificate.

While the doors of the Synod on Synodality, taking place in the Vatican Oct. 4-29, are closed to journalists and the public, a group of survivors of sexual abuse anxiously awaits news on how the assembly addresses the clerical sexual abuse that affected their lives so painfully.

"War is a defeat," Pope Francis insisted as he called for prayers for peace in Israel and Palestine.