OTTAWA – When Sr. Laura Girotto first set foot in Adwa, Ethiopia, in late 1993, it was hard to envision the miracle about to  unfold.

Poverty activists are encouraged by the latest StatsCan numbers showing poverty is on the decline in Canada, but warn that more ambitious programs are needed to end poverty once and for all.

Cardinal Thomas Collins is calling on Catholics to remember the importance of almsgiving this Lenten season.

Winter was settling in and it was a blustery, cold evening as I walked around the streets with Tracey, a survivor of the street who for 14 drug-addled years had called the alleys and drug dens of the downtown area “home.” 

ROME – Sustainable development in rural areas is key to making poverty and hunger a thing of the past, Pope Francis said.

On a recent Saturday morning visit to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a person mummy-wrapped in a dragonfly blue blanket lay motionless a few feet from the corner of Hastings and Main. 

VATICAN – Those who proclaim the Gospel must embrace humility and poverty to give an authentic witness to faith and not use others to climb the ladder of success, Pope Francis said.

As Ontario courts grapple with the case against the provincial government on basic income, the Jesuit Forum for Social Faith and Justice is reminding Catholics that Catholic social teaching demands society must provide an economic minimum that supports families and human dignity.

It was one of those nights when I was challenged by Pope Francis’ insightful observation in The Joy of the Gospel: “The Gospel tells us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas.”

How young people end up homeless and what happens to them once they’re on the street are basic questions for those who want to end homelessness. 

PANAMA CITY – Young people attending World Youth Day called attention to the world's environmental problems, issuing what they called a "manifesto" for the "care of the common home."

For several years now, Catholic refugee policy — articulated passionately and repeatedly by the Holy See and many national bishops’ conferences — has focused on the urgent secondary thing, rather than the most important primary thing.

OTTAWA – After 10 years at the helm of Citizens for Public Justice, Joe Gunn, 64, is leaving Feb. 11 to head up the new Oblate Centre at Saint Paul University in Ottawa.

VANCOUVER – Three Vancouver women have left career and school behind to serve the homeless.

ROME – After weeks of confusion and consternation, Rome's mayor told the Vatican newspaper that Rome Caritas would benefit not only from the coins tourists throw in the Trevi Fountain, but from coins tossed in any of the city's historic water features.