For the 21 people who will participate in the Retreat for Cancer Patients and their Caregivers at Queen of Apostles Renewal Centre in Mississauga, Ont., Sept. 28, they will have an empathetic leader, one who has walked a mile in their shoes.

In mid-December, my doctor confirmed I had cancer. I was told I’d require surgery. Major surgery! ASAP! Not the sort of thing one wants to hear just before Christmas. Not with a pandemic raging. In the weeks that followed I underwent umpteen tests to determine how and when the Beast would be tackled. 

Each new cancer treatment has become a door to walk through. On the other side of the door is a new room. The door to the old room closes never to be opened again.

I had some concern about writing this column, worried that it might be construed as self-pitying or a way of drawing attention to myself. But as a Catholic I wanted to bring attention to myself so prayers would come my way. So this is why I am writing about the news I received a few weeks ago that my liver cancer had returned.

Sixteen-year-old Isabella Auer’s diagnosis of cancer has not made her path easy, but she has risen to accept her disease with faith and courage.

He was exhausted, lonely, in pain and occasionally maligned. But he carried a vision in his head and a love in his heart that kept him going despite the circumstances.

Gone prematurely, remembered always.

Rebecca Maureen (Becky) Beaton passed away early one mid-May morning after a gutsy 30-month battle with cancer. Becky was just 36 and I was proud to call her my niece for that seemingly brief period of time.

OTTAWA – A Catholic woman has filed a complaint with a Quebec health agency alleging that her husband was denied antibiotics to treat a bladder infection after doctors determined it was better to let him die because he had cancer.

It’s been one year since terminally ill Canadians have been legally free to choose medical intervention to end their lives. In that time, some 1,400 people have chosen assisted suicide.

The legendary musician and showman David Bowie was as mutable and enigmatic about his religious views as he was about his music, art and gender-bending fashion choices.

TORONTO - One of Michael Burgess's final requests was to have St. Michael's Choir School participate at his funeral Mass. With hundreds of mourners packing Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church on Oct. 5, that request was granted.

Adult stem cells, easily harvested from human bone marrow, umbilical cord blood and fat tissue, have a successful track record in treatments for more than 90 medical conditions and diseases, including sickle cell anemia, multiple myeloma cancer and damaged heart tissue.

CHICAGO - Cardinal Francis E. George, the retired archbishop of Chicago who was the first native Chicagoan to head the archdiocese, died April 17 at his residence after nearly 10 years battling cancer. He was 78.

TORONTO - Fifteen hundred students at St. John Paul II Catholic Secondary School cheered excitedly during a 2013 assembly to welcome students back to school after a long summer vacation.

For the past six months, while undergoing treatment for cancer, I was working on a reduced schedule. The medical treatments, while somewhat debilitating, left me still enough health and energy to carry on the administrative duties in my present ministry, but they didn’t allow me any extra energy to teach classes or to offer any lectures, workshops or retreats at outside venues, something I normally do. I joked with my family and friends that I was “under house arrest.” But I was so grateful for the energy that I still had that being unable to teach and give lectures was not deemed a sacrifice. I was focused on staying healthy, and the health that I was given was appreciated as a great grace.