OTTAWA – A proposed law by Quebec’s new government that would ban religious symbols is a clear violation of fundamental rights, said Montreal’s archbishop and Canada’s former Ambassador of Religious Freedom.

It was eight years ago this week that Canada’s Br. André Bessette was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI. The humble Holy Cross brother who was instrumental in the construction of St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal died Jan. 6, 1937 at the age of 91. Over his remarkable life and in the years since, he has been credited with many miraculous healings. During the six days after his death, up to a million people filed past his coffin, surrounded by hundreds of crutches and canes from pilgrims who attested to his gifts. Here is an excerpt from The Register of Jan. 21, 1937:

MONTREAL – The re-introduction of sex education into Quebec schools goes against fundamental rights of parents, says the president of the Association of Catholic Parents of Quebec.

QUEBEC CITY – St. Marie de l’Incarnation, a French Ursuline nun sent to establish the order in New France in the 17th century, has not yet delivered all her secrets.

OTTAWA – The graves of at least a dozen Ukrainians who died while interned in a remote camp in Quebec during the First World War are slowly fading into the forest landscape.

The future of an historic cathedral in Quebec has been secured by a transaction that saw the local bishop trade away a former convent and his diocese assume the cathedral’s $300,000 debt.

At an ecumenical prayer service for peace in the Middle East, Cardinal Thomas Collins made his most direct appeal yet for the Canadian government to pay special attention to Christian refugees as it distributes aid in the region and accepts refugees for resettlement.

As Montreal Auxiliary Bishop Alain Faubert quite rightly puts it, there is nothing complicated about how we should respond to a summer influx of asylum seekers at Quebec’s southern border.

OTTAWA – A Catholic woman has filed a complaint with a Quebec health agency alleging that her husband was denied antibiotics to treat a bladder infection after doctors determined it was better to let him die because he had cancer.

OTTAWA – As waves of asylum seekers continue to cross illegally into Canada from Donald Trump’s America, Catholic dioceses in Quebec and eastern Ontario are mobilizing to provide the border crossers with food, shelter and pastoral support.

OTTAWA – When no priests were available, the Bishop of the Quebec diocese of Rouyn-Noranda sought and received Vatican permission for a local nun to officiate at a wedding.

OTTAWA  – It is a “big mistake” for women to embrace a feminism that says achieving equality with men comes “only when they erase, minimize, or reject their femininity and motherhood,” said Cardinal Gerald Lacroix of Quebec.

OTTAWA – Euthanasia opponents find it a “great irony” the physician who championed Quebec’s euthanasia law now has second thoughts.

MONTREAL – The Grand Séminaire de Montréal’s storied past is helping to preserve its future.