Finally the Vatican seems to recognize that the shame inflicted on the Church by the sex-abuse scandals is as much about bishops who cover up crimes as it is clerics who commit them.

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. 

Even those who resisted expansion of gay rights from the mid-1990s to 2011 ultimately conceded the absurdity of the U.S. military’s so-called “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy. 

Fourteen years. That’s how long Jean Vanier said his life was in “a holding pattern.” 

There were more Christian martyrs in the 20th century than in all of the previous 19 centuries combined. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and many of their lesser-known totalitarian colleagues put millions of Christians to death for their faith in that terrible hundred-year period.

Archbishop Michael Mulhall, our new chief shepherd in Kingston, was installed on the feast of Philip and James, May 3. It was a fittingly grand occasion, with much joy among the priests and the people at receiving our new archbishop.

Unfortunate statement

Re: An architect’s quest for ‘transcendence’ (April 28):

To read statistical surveys of religion in Canada and the United States is to believe organized religion is imploding. 

Scientists warn that Earth is in the early stages of the “sixth mass extinction,” with a decrease of up to 60 per cent since the 1970s of the numbers of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish on the planet.

Jean Vanier, Canadian writer, philosopher and humanitarian who died May 7, was a champion for people with intellectual disabilities and touched countless lives through his constant message of love.