Arts and Culture

Fr. Robert “Bob” Bedard (1929-2011), a beloved advocate of the Canadian and global Catholic communities, is the subject of an upcoming documentary-drama from award-winning Catholic filmmaker Kevin Dunn.

The future of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s Sisters, is more of the same — more hope, more love, more care and compassion launched into the gaping wound of destitution, despair and neglect visible in every city in the world. 

Pope Francis is once again reaching out over the heads of world leaders to appeal directly to ordinary people — people of all faiths and none — on behalf of a planet in crisis.

A faithful voice in Canadian politics lives on. At 95, former Senator Lois Wilson is still campaigning, not for herself or for a political party but for human rights, for a guaranteed livable income, for a full and generous welcome to refugees, for preservation of the natural world which has been central to her life of prayer.

Following two summers of cancellations brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian Badlands Passion Play returned each Friday, Saturday and Sunday July 1 through 17 to dramatize the epic life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The latest book on Pope Pius XII, the first to include material from the complete archives up to 1958, repeats a lot of old news, but adds some interesting detail about the culture and politics of the papal court during the Second World War, according to a Canadian scholar who wrote a landmark biography of the wartime pope.

Though a devout believer in Jesus Christ, Serbian-American filmmaker Yelena Popovic, the director of the newly released Man of God, did not foresee tackling religious subject matter in her professional career.

Back in 2009 Douglas Beaumont issued a challenge to Christian moviegoers. The U.S. academic wrote The Message Behind the Movie: How to Engage with a Film Without Disengaging Your Faith. It implored Christians who are hardcore resisters of Hollywood, and the ones who consume all things Tinseltown without discernment, to dig deeper.

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.

Maritime Canadian writer Anne Emery readily admits that it was the beauty of traditional sacred music that led her from an indifferent practice of the faith to a new appreciation of the eucharistic celebration and the dedication and service of priests.