An exclusive focus on whether or not women might be ordained deacons misses the real point of the conversation Pope Francis had with leaders of 900 orders of nuns May 12 at the Vatican, said a Canadian sister who was present for the gathering.

VATICAN CITY – How Christians treat the poor is the clearest demonstration of their relationship with God, Pope Francis insisted.

VATICAN CITY – Catholic sisters globally would be better-equipped to carry out their work if they could become deacons, the head of a global network of nuns has said, an important marker in the sharp debate over women deacons that Pope Francis opened last week.

TORONTO – Is there intelligent life outside of our planet? It’s possible, said Fr. Thomas O’Meara.

TORONTO – It is a collection of beads hung on a chain or a piece of rope, anchored by a cross. The rosary may not look like much but it is one of the most powerful spiritual weapons Catholics can carry.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis led Christians in praying for Catholic and Orthodox clergy and religious kidnapped in Syria and around the world.

TORONTO – Fr. Henri Nouwen is still trying to help us understand. He’s been dead 20 years, but he’s still there talking to us about our gifts and our failures, our hopes and our doubts, God and love and sin and community and loneliness.

OTTAWA – Bishop-elect Scott McCaig traces the beginning of his priestly vocation to a chance glimpse of a sign on the side of the road.

An Italian journalist said he was given private documents by a Vatican official detailing problems with financial reforms and that he had a duty to publish them.