Fr. James Martin, an American Jesuit, author and media personality, has appeared in this column before for his humour and humility, including his intimate 465-page portrait Jesus: A Pilgrimage.

Of all the media coverage following the despicable white supremacist display in Charlottesville and the bumbling reactions from a president, one column in The Globe and Mail really stood out.

The other day, I got into a discussion about singularity and artificial intelligence with a computer science student. He’s young, smart and full of optimism. I’m older, debatably wiser and certainly more skeptical about the benefits of AI.

I’ve long been fascinated by political correctness and how it often has a life of its own; either ignoring facts or not bothering to find facts before going off half-cocked.

Driving home after returning a second new dehumidifier that wouldn’t work in less than a week, I couldn’t help thinking about the so-called “good old days” when things were built to last.

One Saturday night years ago, my mother won a trip to Monaco and the French Riviera in a raffle. The next morning, I remember her putting more money in the collection plate than usual.

As a fan of murder mysteries, I was drawn to a new Netflix series entitled The Keepers, a true-crime story about the murder of a popular young nun who was a high school teacher in Baltimore.

This being Mother’s Day weekend, an editor asked if I’d like to write about it. Initially, I decided to pass because I’ve written about my wonderful late mother many times.

Whether opening a free laundromat for the homeless in Rome or shunning the palatial papal apartments in the Vatican, Pope Francis knows the power of symbolic messages.