Canadian bishops must not have seen the hornets nest they were stepping into March 28 when they issued a somewhat ambiguously worded letter to Canada’s Indigenous peoples. 

Here we go again. Development and Peace, an organization created by Canada’s bishops, is back on the hot seat over allegations it failed to properly screen some overseas partners. At least 11 dioceses have withheld funds from the organization after suggestions that several of its partner agencies are offside on issues that include abortion, contraception and gender theory. 

Why won’t Pope Francis issue a formal apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s residential school system? 

Pope Francis has long held in esteem the late Cardinal Francois-Xavier Nguyen van Thuan, the archbishop of Saigon who spent 13 years in a communist prison camp, including nine years in solitary confinement.

What is peace? What does it mean in the Christian sense? 

Carl Hétu has watched the disappearance of Christians in the Middle East by the thousands. Lately, he’s begun to wonder if he’s seeing it begin in Canada, too.

There is a special type of panic that is reserved for watching your piano being maneuvered up three flights of stairs. 

There is a deeply Catholic sense of hope in standing on history’s shore watching a major wave break while sensing another building, barely visible, on the horizon.

The Catholic relationship with Canada’s Indigenous peoples no doubt wobbled with the announcement that Pope Francis is not coming here to offer the apology so explicitly called for by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. After so much suffering, it could hardly be otherwise.