Michael Swan, The Catholic Register

Michael Swan, The Catholic Register

Michael is Associate Editor of The Catholic Register.

He is an award-winning writer and photographer and holds a Master of Arts degree from New York University.

Follow him on Twitter @MmmSwan, or click here to email him.

TORONTO - Toronto’s African Catholic Community celebrated Nelson Mandela’s life Dec. 8 and claimed him as their inspiration three days after the man who led South Africa out of apartheid died.

The Church of Pope Francis’ dreams, a Church that is poor and for the poor, is becoming the dream of Canadians, many of whom, from all across the spectrum, have been left smiling by Pope Francis’ love letter to the Church on the new evangelization.

Touring Tacloban in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan, Ryan Worms was aware of horror and grace.

Money can’t buy you love, or justice, or reconciliation. But sometimes money is the necessary first step.

Just days before Pope Francis laid out his dream for a missionary Church in all parts of the world, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ president Archbishop Paul-André Durocher put forward his own hopes for the new evangelization in Canada.

The first thing the Bible tells us about being human is that humans are an image. “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.’ ” We are a picture of God made by God.

TORONTO - Since it was launched in Toronto in 2005, Israel Apartheid Weeks have spread across university campuses in North America. In recent years there have been events claiming Israel is “an apartheid state” at New York University, Cambridge University in England, in Johannesburg, South Africa and in Jerusalem.

Twenty-million dollars in matching funds from Ottawa for Philippines typhoon relief have so far gone to a familiar list of United Nations agencies and heavyweight non-governmental organizations with experience in emergency relief and development.

A typhoon half a world away is a lesson in global responsibility and the golden rule for students at Senator O’Connor Catholic Secondary School in Toronto’s east end.

On any given day more than 160,000 Canadians over 18 are in jail, though only 38,000 of them have been convicted of a crime. Despite a decline in crime rates, the rate at which Canadians are jailed rose by five per cent between 2001 and 2011, according to Statistics Canada.