With the death of Bishop John Michael Sherlock on Aug. 12 at the age of 93, I expect that I am not the only member of the sprawling Diocese of London whose sense of bereavement is mixed with bursts of jubilation at a race that was so well run. 

A mere 35 years after my Catholic conversion, I suppose I should be a little embarrassed that it is only now that I am finally getting the hang of the rosary and finding it a very powerful devotional instrument in the way that it commands and directs and focuses my prayer. What took me so long? 

Though my legs and lower vertebrae sympathetically throbbed at the prospect of spending another 16 out of 24 sleep-deprived hours sandwiched into a chartered bus barreling back and forth between London and Ottawa for the National March for Life, I thought it was important to support the largest annual protest in our nation’s capital each year. 

The Catholic Register won 15 awards and was named the No. 1 Christian newspaper in Canada at a gala banquet to recognize excellence in Christian journalism.

London Ontario’s only candidate for sainthood, Henry Edward Dormer (1844-66) was a 21-year-old British Army ensign who only lived in London for a grand total of 220 days — the last seven months of his life — but left an indelible impression that still inspires his adopted townspeople a century and a half later. 

Canadian Catholics and Christians generally are not paranoid if they harbour suspicions that their governmental overlords are unsubtly trying to control their rights of free speech, religion and assembly. 

A flowing white wedding gown is not an everyday sight along the busy streets of Rome.

My wife and I, in our 40th year of married life, are renewing our vows this month at a special Mass in the Marian chapel of our home parish at London’s St. Peter’s Cathedral Basilica.

With the secularization of our culture galloping away on all fronts,  Advent and Christmas can be haunting and haunted times of year.

If you think of artists as strange, unbalanced, complicated personalities whose natural habitat is somewhere on the margins, Herman Goodden is not about to change your opinion. But if you think books about art and artists are dull, academic, jargon-laden wastes of time, paper and ink, Goodden wants you to think again.

Catholic Register reporters, editors and designers were recognized for another year of outstanding achievement by taking home 14 awards, including eight first-place honours, at the annual Canadian Church Press gala dinner April 29 in Toronto.

When the 750th birthday of Dante Aligheri (1265-1321) was celebrated in Italy in May, Pope Francis invited Catholics all over the world to take up and read one of the cornerstone works of Western and Christian civilization, The Divine Comedy, as an act of preparation for the extraordinary Holy Year of Mercy which launches Dec. 8.  Francis says Dante “is a prophet of hope, herald of the possibility of redemption, liberation and the profound transformation of every man and woman, of all humanity.”

LONDON, ONT. - My friend Jane Loptson died in the hallway outside of her subsidized apartment in the early afternoon of Dec. 27.