VATICAN – Pope Francis expressed his gratitude to the men and women who work day in and day out protecting him and millions of pilgrims who visit St. Peter's Basilica each year.

A celebration planned by the Canadian Goan Christian Group for St. Joseph’s parish in Mississauga on Oct. 14 will highlight the role that immigrants play in keeping the Church in Canada alive and vibrant.

As a frequent rider of the subway, I have seen the Canada 150 ads that feature influential young adults and posing the question of how they will shape the future of our country.

Lent gives us two solemn feasts, St. Joseph and the Annunciation of the Lord. Both fell in the last weeks of March, and it is likely that a majority of Canadian parishes did not celebrate both of them; a great many likely celebrated neither.

VATICAN CITY – In a talk with representatives of Catholic men's religious orders, Pope Francis admitted there’s “corruption” in the Vatican but said he is not troubled by it and is working to reform the church administration.

Canada Day often seems a rather tepid, bureaucratic affair celebrating the day Great Britain’s Parliament managed to pass a law granting four small North American colonies the right to elect their own politicians to a single House of Commons — not a shot fired and no declaration of independence. But why limit ourselves to such a paltry notion of Canada’s origins?

TORONTO - The parliamentary committee report on how to legalize assisted suicide may want “all publicly funded health care institutions (to) provide medical assistance in dying,” but Ontario Catholic hospitals, nursing homes and health centres aren’t having it.

MONTREAL - What began as a modest display of some 25 cribs in 1979 has blossomed into a popular Montreal tradition at St. Joseph’s Oratory. This year, the Nativity has been interpreted by more than 200 artists from around the world in the form of a multi-media exposition of figurines, carvings and paintings that depict the birth of Christ.

KINGSBRIDGE, ONT. - After an almost three-year hiatus, the echo of the uplifting song “Revival” by Robin Mark could be heard inside the former St. Joseph’s Church, a beautiful turn-of-the-century, red brick church building in Ashfield Township in Ontario’s Huron County.

TORONTO - People go to hospital in the hope of feeling better. But if patients are welcomed into a forbidding, institutional room with a strange bed, fluorescent lights and cold, hard floor, what then?

VAUGHAN, ONT. - Sr. Andrea Dumont, a missionary Sister of St. Joseph, was honoured this year with Catholic Missions In Canada's St. Joseph Award.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, who was convicted in 2012 on one misdemeanour count of failing to report suspected child abuse.