I come like a beggar with a gift in my hand. These are the opening lyrics to a song by Sydney Carter that I learned as part of the Toronto Catholic Worker community many years ago. As we enter the season of Lent and its call to prayer, fasting and almsgiving, I find myself quietly singing it to myself. The song continues, “By the hungry I will feed you, by the poor I’ll make you rich, by the broken I will mend you, tell me which one is which.”

Lenten alms-giving to Canada’s Catholic international development agency is getting turbo-charged by religious orders.

The typical image of poverty is often presented to us when we walk down a busy street. We see a man or woman holding a coffee cup, baseball cap or some other vessel to receive the pocket change of passers-by. 

It’s a simple action, almost involuntary, and we seldom give it another thought. We are asked to dip into our deep pockets as we sit in the pews, and to spare some money for the less fortunate at Christmas.

When the alarming spread of COVID-19 forced the closure of churches and a suspension of Masses in the middle of March, Catholics turned to the National Catholic Broadcasting Council (NCBC)’s Daily TV Mass as a source of comfort and a pathway to connect with God during fraught times.

In the middle of the second wave of COVID-19 sweeping Canada, Development and Peace-Caritas Canada is making its second attempt to raise the money and awareness its partners in poor countries desperately need.

I have always made it a priority to support not only the charity that I have worked with, but also many other charities that serve our greater communities. 

Leaving a bequest to the Church is your legacy to the faith you have cherished during your lifetime. Making sure your wishes are fulfilled means making sure the wording in your Will is correct.

Mary Thicket is not rich. But that doesn’t stop her from being a donor.

The rapid proliferation of COVID-19 prevented ShareLife, the Archdiocese of Toronto’s annual charitable appeal, from launching its major parish fundraising campaign on the last weekend of March as intended. 

If you ever doubted the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, check out your parish’s COVID-era finances. After months of closed doors and no revenue, followed by months of full-cost operations for Sunday congregations that are a fraction of normal attendance, somehow your parish is still up and running.

OTTAWA -- With the federal government facing an increasing deficit piled up by spending on COVID-19 relief measures, a Christian think tank says Ottawa must do more to help charities survive the effects of the pandemic.

It’s hard to tell how Giving Tuesday affected donations to Catholic charities in Canada, but ShareLife did see an uptick in donations from an e-mail blast sent to coincide with the annual charitable fundraising day May 5.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Five years after the Islamic State invaded northern Iraq and began systematically persecuting the country's Christians, the Knights of Columbus are continuing their work of supporting Iraqi parishes that are rebuilding, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said in his annual report Aug. 6 at the Knights' 137th Supreme Convention in Minneapolis.

Charity can be habit-forming — at least that’s the hope of the Christian think tank Cardus.