Retreats

Neighbouring countries are bracing to receive an additional five million Venezuelan refugees this year on top of the three million people who have already left the crisis-stricken nation.

VATICAN – Pope Francis will make a three-day apostolic visit to Romania in late May, the Vatican announced.

Lack of respect

Re: Van Hee launches a constitutional challenge of bubble zone law (Dec. 2): [item/28519-fr-van-hee-launches-constitutional-challenge-of-bubble-zone-law]

Thank you for the good coverage of pro-life hero Fr. Tony Van Hee.

The undemocratic bubble-zone law, in effect forbidding helpful outreach to pregnant women seeking an abortion, really needs to be challenged. But I have one question about the headline in The Register, in reference to Fr. Tony Van Hee as simply “Van Hee.” This sounds cold and disrespectful.

I am aware it is standard practice in the media to refer to people in headlines by only their surnames, and not their titles. But might not this lack of respect also tie into society’s disrespect of human life, and even God Himself? Just musing.

Yvonne Dienesch,

Eganville, Ont.

KYENJOJO, Uganda – Not all that long ago, family members and residents of this small town in western Uganda mourned the loss of Sarah Baguma, who was stabbed to death by her husband in a domestic wrangle.

ROME – The formal recognition of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine brings "a wind of hope" that new opportunities will be created for dialogue and concrete cooperation in the search for Christian unity, said the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

WASHINGTON – No sooner had President Donald Trump finished his Jan. 8 nine-minute speech, his first such event televised in prime time from the Oval Office, about what he termed a crisis at the border, than Catholic groups and others began tearing apart his arguments.

After an extraordinary year of bickering and division in the U.S. Church, some 200 American bishops have listened to Pope Francis and taken a timeout. They gathered in early January for a six-day retreat near Chicago where they were encouraged to be silent and to pray.

OTTAWA – The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) is welcoming the revisions to the Canada Summer Jobs application.

WASHINGTON – Sr. Wendy Beckett has been widely described as both an unlikely art critic and television star, but that may have been what made her all the more likeable.

KINSHASA – Catholic church leaders in Congo have questioned the official outcome of the Dec. 30 elections, saying the officially published results "do not correspond with the data collected" by the church's 40,000 observers.