PARIS - A hero emerging from the Notre Dame Cathedral fire April 15 is Father Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain of the Paris Fire Brigade, who is credited with saving a reliquary containing the crown of thorns and the Blessed Sacrament from the burning cathedral.

Tragedy strikes. It’s inevitable and, unfortunately, constant.

WASHINGTON – In his youth, Jesuit Father Patrick J. Conroy pictured himself as a lawyer and a senator, working in the deep recesses of Washington's U.S. Capitol building. In a way, he's doing just that but not in the way he imagined.

TORONTO - Toronto’s downtown Catholic campus chaplaincies came together to be visible witnesses of their faith on the streets.

OTTAWA - When Brigadier General Guy Chapdelaine, Canada’s new Chaplain General, spent Christmas in Afghanistan in 2006, he took no chances on what might be in store for him.

TORONTO - Growing up in Venezuela, Fr Eduardo Soto fell in love with the Pan Am Games when his home country hosted the quadrennial event in Caracas in 1983.

For high school seniors, the end of the school year is approaching. While this normally brings relief and excitement for the summer, high school graduates face the uncertainty of what is to come. Starting university or college is, after all, a leap into the unknown.

Death, chaos, silence, despair… and faith? The post-traumatic stress disorder crisis in Canada’s military is being met with a small core of dedicated men and women who have always been there — the chaplains.

The Canadian military’s first Roman Catholic Chaplain General in a decade says his top priority is to recruit more chaplains.

TORONTO - For Ghina Al-Sewaidi — lawyer, Muslim and Iraqi-Canadian — the correct word to describe Islamic State attacks on Yezidi and Mandaean people is genocide. The correct response is to sponsor the survivors through Canada’s refugee system.

Leadership positions in campus ministry are invariably rewarding. They nurture relationships between peers that are rooted in faith and create a comfortable space where students can feel open to grow in confidence in their devotion to Christ.

In 1964, when Jean Vanier quietly launched L’Arche, he says he had “no idea that this would be a revolutionary reality . . .  that it would grow.”

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.

WASHINGTON - In 1964, when Jean Vanier quietly began what would become an international network, he had "no idea that this would be a revolutionary reality ... that it would grow," he remarked joyfully.