Helping 5.8 million Canadians out of poverty isn’t a charity project. It’s about building a better economy and living up to the human rights we proclaim as a nation, said the author of a new report on poverty.

KATHMANDU, Nepal – Nepal has introduced a ban on pornography as part of a government initiative to stem the country’s high rate of sexual assault.

VATICAN – The scandal of human trafficking, which affects millions of young people in the world, needs to be included in the Synod of Bishops' final document, one synod father said.

BEIRUT – Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche, is the recipient of the Spiritual Solidarity Award from Adyan, a foundation for interreligious studies and spiritual solidarity based in Lebanon.

VATICAN – Abolishing the death penalty worldwide would reflect the brave and hope-filled belief that crime can be dealt with without capital punishment and that a criminal should be given the chance to reform, a top Vatican diplomat told world leaders.

New federal government rules to monitor euthanasia and assisted suicide are opaque and weak at a time when legally induced deaths are rising at alarming levels, warn several organizations.

It would seem the war over euthanasia is over, but the fight is not ending for Alex Schadenberg.

Journeys to Justice: Reflections on Canadian Christian Activism by Joe Gunn (Novalis, 176 pages, softcover, $14.95 on amazon.ca) 

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JAKARTA, Indonesia – Fighting human trafficking has become a daily routine over the past five years for Father Chrisanctus Paschalis Saturnus, a priest in Indonesia's Pangkal-Pinang Diocese.

Over the next 12 years the federal government promises to raise 2.1 million Canadians out of poverty and take Canada’s poverty rate from one in every eight Canadians to one in every 17 Canadians by 2030.

It was a made-in-Ontario experiment based on a concept put forth by such thinkers as Conservative Canadian Hugh Segal and American free-market advocate Milton Friedman: a basic income guarantee, something like Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement. 

Over the next 12 years the federal government promises to raise 2.1 million Canadians out of poverty and take Canada’s poverty rate from one in every eight Canadians to one in every 17 by 2030.

OTTAWA – Anti-poverty advocates are disappointed that Ontario’s new Conservative government intends to cancel the province’s basic income pilot project, arguing that the study is important to help reduce poverty far beyond the province.

VATICAN – Building on the development of Catholic Church teaching against capital punishment, Pope Francis has ordered a revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to assert "the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person" and to commit the church to working toward its abolition worldwide.

VATICAN – In a speech to a family association Saturday, Pope Francis again stressed that God's vision of the family is between a man and a woman, and compared the abortion of children who are sick or disabled to a Nazi mentality.