An invitation from Toronto Archbishop Francis Leo to pray the Novena for Saint Michael the Archangel, patron saint of the Archdiocese.

In the roughly one kabillion words already spent analyzing the American presidential election, Pope Francis has put the preferential option facing voters most starkly – and darkly.

do not heap up empty phrases.

Matthew 6: 7

I recently emailed someone and assured them that I would provide a brief summary of the meeting we had attended. As soon as I hit send, I thought, isn’t a summary … brief? Indeed, aren’t summaries often called briefs? My daughter regularly claims something is an over-exaggeration. We don’t usually disagree on her main point, but always quarrel about the use of “over.” Isn’t an exaggeration already excessive? How can you over-exaggerate an exaggeration? Tautologies abound. 

The Shroud of Turin—venerated as the burial cloth of Jesus for centuries—has been vindicated.  Back in 1988 was big news that the Shroud had been carbon dated and the result was supposedly that the Shroud dated back to only the 1200s and was deemed a medieval fake. The findings were even printed in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s newspaper. To many, it seemed conclusive (though no good explanation was offered as to how the image got on the cloth). But for many us, the so-called “science” felt off, and we continued to believe in the veracity of the Shroud. 

Remarks by Pope Francis at Indonesia’s Istiqlal Mosque during the Holy Father’s visit to that country as well as New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore Sept. 2-13, 2024.

You know something? Nobody is perfect. Now this might come as a great surprise to some of you just as it did to me. 

Some of you may remember a folk rock band from BC that was moderately popular in the 1990s named Spirit of the West. One of their hits was titled “Political”. Detailing the sentiments of one looking back on a failed relationship, the chorus queried “Why did everything, every little thing, every little thing between you and me have to be so political?” 

“We know that we've stolen a year of childhood right around the Western world, the year of five, when our little ones are still supposed to be largely running around outside building sandcastles, and pretending they're unicorns or dragons.” Australian author Maggie Dent spoke these words on Janet Lansbury’s parenting podcast Unruffled. “We stole that year and when we did that, the pressure for you to get your kid ready for school has intensified and yet the capacity for our children to accelerate their development on any level hasn't changed at all.” 

In an interview which the historian Frank Linderman recounted, Plenty Coups, traditional chief of the Crow Nation, refused to speak of his life after the destruction of the buffalo. The chief’s story did not include the years between the passing of the buffalo until his death in 1932. 

Hope already seemed on life support in what have become the killing fields of Canada’s public health-care system.