One of the joys of Christmas at The Catholic Register is judging what has become perhaps our most popular annual feature — the children’s Christmas drawing contest.

The holiday season can be an isolating time for those who are living on the breadline. When you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, it is comforting to know that the Church of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields can be a place of refuge and community.

There are a million Catholic complaints about Christmas.

OTTAWA – An Ottawa priest is hoping a book made for children can deliver a very serious Christmas message for adults, too.

TORONTO – September isn’t just the start of another school year.

Every December, a package from the Holy Land arrives on Hikmat Dandan’s doorstep. Inside are 65 hand-drawn Christmas cards in different shapes, sizes and colours.

JOHANNESBURG – Pax Christi International, the Catholic peace movement, said it will build up young people to contribute to peace and justice in Africa, noting that children are the continent's greatest resource.

While Canada resettled more than 35,000 refugees from Syria over the last 12 months and brought refugee processing times down to eight months for privately sponsored refugees from Lebanon, refugees in Ethiopia languish more than six years in the system and Church groups are discouraged from sponsoring Africans.

As the world focuses most of its attention on Syria, East Africa and its nine million refugees — 26 per cent of the world’s refugee population — is facing another wave of failed states, civil wars and ethnic cleansing.

For the first time, a not-so-little piece of Cape Breton is standing tall in Boston’s downtown this Christmas season, keeping alive a tradition that has its roots in a tragedy that rocked Nova Scotia 99 years ago.