As the COVID pandemic began three years ago, many asked what the new normal might be once it subsided. In that question, there was an optimism, even hope, that a massive amount of suffering and death would smarten us up, spur us to become more concerned for the needs of others. 

In previous summers, work shifts at the Canadian Food for Children (CCFC) warehouse in Mississauga, Ont., would be staffed by large parish youth groups.

VATICAN CITY -- A resident at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the residence where Pope Francis lives, tested positive for COVID-19, the Vatican announced.

When COVID-19 forced frontline workers to shift their support for homeless youth online, the result was more loneliness, more depression, more drug use, more overdoses and more thoughts of suicide, according to new research from Covenant House, Canada’s largest shelter serving young people.

VATICAN CITY - The Swiss Guard reported an additional seven men have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the current number of cases among the 113 guardsmen to 11.

EDMONTON, Alberta - The largest single outbreak of COVID-19 in North America may be one of the biggest lessons in the Catholic social principles of sacrifice, the value of work, care for the common good, and solidarity.

Young adult missionaries with the National Evangelization Teams (NET) Canada are facing a new pandemic-induced reality this year.

It has been 794 years since St. Francis of Assisi left this Earth, but you can find his fingerprints all over the Pope’s latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti .

OTTAWA - The federal government’s commitment “to make a significant, long-term, sustained investment to create a Canada-wide early learning and child-care system” sounds good on the surface to a national religion-based think tank, but only if it doesn’t create a onesize- fits-all government-mandated system.

VATICAN CITY - An eventual vaccine for COVID-19 would belong to the world and should not be hoarded greedily by countries hosting the lab or labs that develop it, Pope Francis said.

ROME -- More bishops are pleading with their governments to give priority to ethically developed coronavirus vaccines, but many also are telling Catholics that not getting vaccinated is a more serious moral problem than using the problematic vaccines.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis, the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses and local organizers have agreed to postpone by one year the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress, the Vatican announced April 23.