Anna Farrow

Just a little more than six months after Fr. Kevin Kelly SJ cleared the rooms and locked the doors for what he thought was the last time at a former Jesuit retreat house in Montreal, he and his team have now scrambled to prepare the Old Villa to once again welcome Ukrainians to Canada.

I have just returned from a week singing under the California sun. Not favourite lyrics from the Beach Boys though, but Gregorian chant and Renaissance motets. Along with 74 other choristers, choir directors and organists who attended a Sacred Music Symposium hosted by St. John the Baptist Parish in Orange County, I return to my home parish eager to put into practice what I have learned.

Christian and pro-life groups have postponed their three-day prayer meeting in Quebec City after the provincial government ripped up a rental contract because of false reports the event was an anti-abortion gathering.

Three years ago, Fr. Rob Brennan told his students at Loyola High School that the only vocational aspiration that remained to him was a “good death.” Now, as he lies in his hospice bed at the Jesuit residence in Pickering, Ont., Brennan’s friends, family and Jesuit confreres are united in prayer that he should be granted such an end.

Quebec’s legislature has delivered a triple-whammy expansion of so-called medical aid in dying (MAiD) that includes obliging all palliative care facilities in the province to offer doctor-supplied end of life.

Montreal Catholics again made their presence real in the heart of the city June 8, heeding Archbishop Christian Lépine’s call to make Christ the heart of their world.

What is the price of an abusive kiss by a predatory priest? How much should an unwanted fondle fetch to serve justice to the victim? Ask the class-action lawyers.

A massive fire that began on the afternoon of May 25 and burned for two days inflicted extensive damage to a historic former monastery in Montreal that itself once provided shelter for those left homeless after the Great Fire in 1852.

More than 60 victims of sexual assault by clergy in the Archdiocese of Montreal, and their lawyers, will be poised June 9 to divide up a collective settlement approaching $15 million.

A few years ago, on the Word on Fire website, author Andrew Petiprin mused, “Wouldn’t it be a powerful witness if there were new Catholic novels to grab off the newsstand at the airport?”