ROME - Australian Cardinal George Pell promised to work with a group of abuse survivors to help prevent suicide among victims and support healing and protection programs.

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. - San Bernardino Bishop Gerald Barnes urged people to pray for unity and healing after the mass shooting in San Bernardino Dec. 2 that left 14 people dead and 21 others wounded.

During my high school years, I struggled with mental illness. I felt hopeless. I was alone. I was hurting and I knew that nothing could change the way I felt. It was during this time that I grew in my faith.

All of us live with some wounds, bad habits, addictions and temperamental flaws that are so deeply engrained and long-standing that it seems like they are part of our genetic make-up. And so we tend to give into a certain quiet despair in terms of ever being healed of them.

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?

Among the action calls from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report on residential schools is an insistence that Pope Francis apologize in person to Canada’s aboriginal peoples.

Once, across a crowded meeting room, I recognized a face. Our eyes locked. Weeks earlier, this person and I had attended the same retreat. We both knew we needed to steal away and talk, as soon as possible.

When the opportunity came, each of us took it immediately. We found a quiet place. We talked as though we’d known each other for years. “I had to speak to you,” said my new old friend. “I feel as though we met in Narnia, and back here in the regular world I have to touch you to know it was real.” I understood instantly.  

OTTAWA - Now that the tragic history of Canada’s residential schools has been thoroughly documented, it’s time for healing, said Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

NISKAYUNA, N.Y. - The night she miscarried in 1968, Dorothy Caruso remembers remaining calm, as if she was watching someone else losing a much-wanted pregnancy. The baby was about three months along; she’d already bought a white baby sweater and a set of blocks.

SASKATOON - Many factors contribute to a positive healing experience at a hospital, including medical expertise and respectful and compassionate care by physicians, health care personnel, staff and volunteers. But for patients at St. Paul’s Hospital, where core values include holistic care, the process of healing the body, mind and spirit is enhanced through art.

COLOMBO, SRI LANKA - It happened here again, but this time rather unexpectedly. In 1970 and in 1995, when Blessed Paul VI and St. John Paul II visited Sri Lanka, the president who invited them was no longer in office when they arrived. So it was for Pope Francis’ arrival this week, but more dramatically so.

TORONTO - Pope Francis’ mission of healing to Sri Lanka will be a critical moment for Toronto’s huge Tamil community, which includes thousands of refugees still mourning relatives killed in the 26-year Sri Lankan civil war, said Tamil priest and theologian Fr. Joseph Chandrakanthan.

The problem with earthly justice is that sometimes it seems to take its good old time and other times it just doesn’t seem to exist at all. 

BEIRUT - Syrian children who have seen their houses bombed and family members killed are using string, glue, socks, beads and other odds and ends to help put their lives back together.