COVID has been hard on families, but just how hard is only now coming to light, as society gradually opens up to a post-pandemic reality.

In his own way, Pope Francis is developing a different kind of vaccine to battle the effects of COVID-19. This is not a vaccine developed in a scientific lab, but it may well be a much-needed antidote to some of the unseen but crippling injuries that have accompanied the pandemic.

Couples struggling in their marriage have been hit with a double whammy by the COVID-19 lockdown, according to a counsellor with Catholic Family Services Toronto.

NAIROBI, Kenya -- On the night of May 9, Edward Okello, an aeronautical engineer, died when a kitchen knife was plunged into his chest. Vigilance Shighi later said she did not know how the weapon hit her boyfriend, who had beaten her.

There’s a global public health risk that could tear families apart and harm women and children — not COVID-19 itself, but a related fallout from shutting families indoors and depriving them of jobs and school.

SANTIAGO, Chile – The Vicariate for Social Pastoral Care of Caritas in the Archdiocese of Santiago takes in every year hundreds of women and their children, victims of domestic violence who find in their shelters comprehensive care to be able to get on with their lives.

KYENJOJO, Uganda – Not all that long ago, family members and residents of this small town in western Uganda mourned the loss of Sarah Baguma, who was stabbed to death by her husband in a domestic wrangle.

As more stories of abuse and violence emerge from Hollywood and beyond, agencies like Catholic Family Services Toronto are bracing for impact.

INDIANAPOLIS – An Indiana mother who beat her 7-year-old son with a coat hanger is citing the state’s religious freedom law as a defense against felony child abuse charges, saying her choice of discipline comes straight from her evangelical Christian beliefs.

TORONTO - A simple idea that has helped hundreds of women who face domestic violence and abuse is down to its last few weeks unless Ontario’s provincial government comes up with $70,000 per year to keep it going.

Eternity has more kinds of rooms than this world does.

This is a thought inside the head of Marilynne Robinson’s fictional character, Lila, in Robinson’s recent novel. Lila has reason to think that way, that is, to think outside the box of conventional religious piety because her story is not one that fits piety of any kind.

VATICAN CITY - The often silent plight of sexually abused children, victims of domestic violence, prisoners, the abandoned elderly, the unemployed and immigrants facing hostility will be given a powerful voice during the Stations of the Cross at Rome's Colosseum.