Growing up in the shadow of the Second World War, most Canadian children were well aware of tales of sacrifice and derring-do on the part of our parents’ generation in defeating Germany and the Nazi horrors it had unleashed.

Marking 80 years since some 4,400 Allied troops "heroically gave their lives" to the cause of freedom by storming the beach in Normandy, D-Day commemorations remind the world that disrupting peace in pursuit of worldly interests is a grave sin, Pope Francis said.

The era of divisive debate about Pope Pius XII has been left behind, and now Catholics and Jews, historians and theologians must take up serious and collaborative study, said the co-organizer of a major conference looking at the early results of new research into the wartime pontificate.

One document uncovered during one week of research isn’t enough to draw new or final conclusions about Pope Pius XII’s guilt or innocence regarding the Holocaust, warns Canada’s leading expert on the wartime pope.

May 8 marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, V-E Day.

OXFORD, England -- A top Polish historian has questioned claims by German researchers that newly opened Vatican archives contain information damning the role played by Pope Pius XII during World War II.

VATICAN CITY -- When the Vatican's wartime archives open to researchers March 2, it will be just the start of what should be a long, slow process of studying, analyzing and publishing findings, said the Vatican's archivist and librarian.

WARSAW, Poland -- A Polish researcher has published the first study of religious practices among Christian prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as the 75th anniversary of the Nazi-run death camp's liberation was marked in Israel and Poland.

WARSAW, Poland -- Catholic bishops from Poland and Germany have warned that peace and unity are still needed in Europe, 80 years after the start of World War II.

One of the most contentious debates involving Church figures of the 20th century involves the actions of Pope Pius XII during World War II. 

VATICAN – Declaring that the Catholic Church is unafraid of history, Pope Francis announced that documents in the Vatican Secret Archives relating to the wartime pontificate of Pope Pius XII will be open to scholars in 2020.

An investigation by the Diocese of Hildesheim, Germany, is shedding new light on child sex abuse in Catholic children's homes in the country in the 1950s. A central figure in the inquiry is an esteemed and controversial figure, Bishop Heinrich Maria Janssen, a former priest in Nazi-occupied Poland awarded Germany's highest federal decoration in 1966 for postwar charity work.

When Britain declared war on Germany on Sept. 3, 1939, it was just a formality that Canada would follow suit, which it did a week later. As the war clouds darkened and Canadian troops prepared for the Second World War, Archbishop of Toronto James McGuigan issued a pastoral letter, published in The Register on Sept.  7, 1939:

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April 22 marks the birthday of Robert Oppenheimer, born 104 years ago and famously destined to become known as “the father of the atomic bomb” because of his work on the secret Manhattan Project during the Second World War. When news of the weapon of mass destruction became public with the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945, theologians jumped in on the moral debate over its use. Here is a report from the Aug. 18, 1945 issue of The Catholic Register:

Wine from Raisins, A Life Transformed through Communist Gulag to Canadian Arctic by Josef Svoboda (Novalis, softcover, 240 pages, $27.95)

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