Like a sign hanging on a shop door, the Ontario government is declaring that the province is “open for businesses” through a piece of draft legislation called Making Ontario Open for Business Act.

People around the world are poor for a lot of different reasons. 

SAO PAULO – Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, a Catholic who campaigned to rid the nation of corruption, will take office Jan. 1 with a conservative moral agenda.

News that Ontario’s provincial government had disbanded its roundtable of experts on violence against women has Catholic Family Services woman abuse specialist Shereen McFarlane worried.

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.

OTTAWA – A poverty-fighting group, fresh from a victory over a law that threatened its status as a charity, is facing another round of legal fighting after the federal government appealed the court ruling.

MEXICO CITY – The Argentine Senate voted against a bill that would have decriminalized abortion during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.

NUBA MOUNTAINS, Sudan – The Nuba Mountains region in southern Sudan is a land the world has largely forgotten, except for the Catholic Church, which for more than three decades has stood with the people as they endured hunger, bombing and neglect.

A new report from the Angus Reid Institute showing poverty may be a bigger problem than official statistics indicate is ramping up pressure on Ottawa to unveil a federal poverty reduction strategy.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – The streets of Nicaragua were filled on July 28 by thousands of demonstrators supporting the country’s bishops and priests after repeated attacks by paramilitaries with ties to the government.

JINOTEGA, Nicaragua – Two churches in the Diocese of Jinotega in northern Nicaragua have been desecrated in the past week, amid rising tensions between the Church and the government of president Daniel Ortega.

OTTAWA – The repeal of Ontario’s controversial sex education curriculum by the new government has elicited reactions ranging from jubilation to gloom among Catholic education stakeholders.

LIMA, Peru – Peru's bishops expressed support for an overhaul of the country's judicial system after phone-tap recordings revealing influence peddling and corruption became public.

Fr. Andrew Hogan made history on July 8, 1974, becoming the first Roman Catholic priest to be elected to the House of Commons. Better known as Father Andy, he would serve two terms before losing in the 1980 election. He died in 2002. There have been two other priests who were MPs at the same time — Fr. Bob Ogle (NDP, 1979-84) and Fr. Raymond Gravel (Bloc Quebecois, 2006-08). In 1980, the Vatican banned priests from seeking political office, though bishops could grant special permission. The Register’s Dan Mothersill wrote about Hogan’s historic victory in the July 20, 1974 issue:

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MEXICO CITY – The Mexican bishops conference extended congratulations to presidential election winner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who won a landslide victory on an agenda of change and promises to combat corruption and poverty.