TORONTO - For the first time in Canadian history, the men and women who ventured into war unarmed, carrying a holy book, ready to listen to and serve soldiers in distress are being remembered with a museum exhibition.

As Amir Harrak watched the news this summer, the Toronto scholar saw a history, culture and language that he devoted his life to understanding being turned to dust. Churches, monasteries, mosques blown up, libraries full of ancient manuscripts burned and the people who still speak and live according to the language of Jesus and his Apostles dispersed. The news out of Iraq could not have been worse.

TORONTO - Olivia Chow, John Tory and long-shot candidate Ari Goldkind all offered prayers for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who was being treated in hospital with a stomach tumour detected the evening before Toronto mayoralty candidates were to answer questions from faith leaders at Metropolitan United Church.

TORONTO - Amanda, a former youth-in-care with the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, is acutely aware that her 19-month-old son’s future is dependent on her success in school. 

Many years ago, a person named Margaret Wente called and offered me a job at the Globe and Mail newspaper, which I accepted. Many, many years ago, I passed through the Catholic school system in Toronto, elementary school at Holy Cross and high school at Neil McNeil. 

TORONTO - Toronto’s Catholic Children’s Aid Society is “in the black but losing money,” said executive director Mary McConville. 

TORONTO - With less than a month left in the 2014 ShareLife parish campaign, the charitable fundraising arm of the Archdiocese of Toronto is still more than a million dollars shy of its $12.65-million goal.

TORONTO - Hundreds of students lining up for reconciliation, kids playing Frisbee with the Sisters of Life, bishops sitting with teens rocking out to worship-and-praise music and thousands of young people on their knees adoring the Eucharist — scenes from Toronto’s first Steubenville youth conference. 

Parishioners of Our Lady of Grace parish have been spared from the brunt of active weather that swept through Angus, Ont., on June 17. 

SASKATOON - Toronto artist Sarah Hall was in Saskatoon as her latest work, housed in the Queen of Peace Chapel at the Cathedral of the Holy Family, was blessed by Bishop Donald Bolen. 

TORONTO - The last time Fr. Peter Marr remembers St. Augustine’s Seminary opening its doors freely to the public he was deeply engrossed in studies there.

TORONTO - It’s 5 a.m. and much of the city is still at rest, but not Cardinal Thomas Collins. No, he’s up even before the birds.

TORONTO - As Fr. Omar Hernandez prepared to be ordained to the priesthood with four classmates, his only regret was that his family in Colombia wouldn’t be here to see it. But he soon found out the Lord works in mysterious ways.

TORONTO - Homelessness is solvable and even if the solution isn’t cheap every dollar spent to put homeless people in an apartment of their own saves $2.17 that would otherwise be spent on hospital emergency room visits, other medical services, shelters, prisons and policing, a new study has found.

OTTAWA - Jim Flaherty was buried out of Toronto’s Anglican St. James Cathedral in a state funeral on April 16 but the political life of the former Finance Minister was shaped by his Catholic upbringing, said former colleagues.