WASHINGTON – The American religious nonprofits challenging their participation in the contraceptive mandate under the Affordable Care Act agreed with a U.S. Supreme Court proposal that such coverage be provided through an alternative health care plan without involving the religious employers in a legal brief filed with the court.

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.

OTTAWA - The federal government announced Feb. 18 it will be restoring health care for all refugees seeking a new life in Canada.

OTTAWA - Faith groups from across Canada are calling on Canada’s new government to focus on palliative care instead of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

OTTAWA - Archbishop Paul-André Durocher has written the Justice Minister requesting that Canada’s Catholic bishops be included in consultations regarding assisted suicide legislation.

VATICAN CITY - On International Women's Day, Pope Francis thanked women, "who in thousands of ways, witness to the Gospel and work in the church."

Updated 11/6/14

TORONTO - Canada's health care industry is already on a slippery slope to accepting euthanasia and it may soon turn into a full-blown avalanche, warns Alex Schadenberg. 

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has filed a brief with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver indicating it plans to develop an alternative for Catholic and other religious nonprofit employers to opt out of providing federally mandated contraceptives they object to including in their employee health care coverage.

TORONTO - Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged to pump another $3.5 billion into improving the health of mothers, newborns and children in the developing world between 2015 and 2020.

TORONTO - Our Lady of Mercy is back in Toronto, gleaming and armed with the latest technology while making room for families, children and newborn babies.

St. Joseph's Health Centre blessed its new, four-story patient care wing Dec. 5. The new wing carries on the name of the old Our Lady of Mercy Hospital. The original Our Lady of Mercy merged with St. Joseph's in 1980 and finally closed in 1998.

The new $73-million, 130,000-square-foot wing adds a neonatal intensive care unit, a family birthing centre, a pediatric unit with six surgical day care beds and six medical day care beds, 92 more adult inpatient beds and a child and adolescent mental health unit which includes a full-time classroom.