TORONTO - Gambling is a cruel illusion that causes social harm and family breakdown and should not be promoted by governments, Cardinal Thomas Collins has written in a pastoral letter.

A doctor on trial as an alleged serial killer would normally be front page news. But the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, on trial in Philadelphia for seven first-degree murders, has received little media attention.

Fifty years after the publication of Pacem in Terris, one of the most important papal encyclicals of the 20th century, the world has changed radically but the 1963 teaching of Blessed Pope John XXIII remains as powerful as ever.

Voters in large, pluralistic democracies rarely reach consensus on any substantive issue, but the opinion of Canadians on sex-selective abortion is near unanimous. They overwhelmingly denounce it.

The sports conglomerate that clothes and equips the world’s No. 1 golfer would have us believe that “winning takes care of everything.” That’s the slogan Nike is trumpeting in an ad campaign with Tiger Woods, the golfing impresario who lost his moral compass and his putting stroke three years ago. But Woods is back on top now and that has rejuvenated a marketing bonanza for a sponsor intent on convincing consumers that winning erases his past failings.

The hope and joy of Easter have been magnified this year by the first steps of a Pope who has arrived like the blossoms of an Easter-morning lily to brighten the universal Church.

Cardinal Thomas Collins extended Pope Francis the best wishes and prayers of Canada in a brief meeting March 15 in the Clementine Hall of the apostolic palace.

“Oh, how I wish for a Church that was poor and for the poor!”

White smoke that billowed March 13 from the Sistine Chapel chimney heralded more than the election of Pope Francis.

The past eight years gave proof that the College of Cardinals got it right in 2005 when they shrugged at Joseph Ratzinger’s birth certificate and made him Pope.