Welfare reforms that leave a big gap between the poverty line and being poor enough to receive benefits could end up forcing Church charities to make up the difference for thousands of disabled and marginally employable Ontarians.

“The poor you will always have with you.” Prophetic words of Jesus 2,000 years ago. 

Christmas may come but once a year, but at the Furniture Bank they keep their eyes and ears open to the season year-round.

As Toronto’s city-run shelter system bulges with refugees and migrants, volunteer-run Out of the Cold programs are operating at capacity and wondering when governments are going to get serious about housing.

EDMONTON – A single mother, without a home, sits in a McDonald’s restaurant on Edmonton’s Whyte Avenue strip.

In 2006, after 20 years of stellar work with the Out of the Cold program to shelter the homeless, its co-founder was not impressed.

It is noble to mark the World Day of the Poor with gifts of charity, but Pope Francis has challenged Catholics to go much further than that. He asks us to observe Nov. 18 by making a serious examination of conscience “to see if we are truly capable of hearing the cry of the poor.”

People around the world are poor for a lot of different reasons. 

When Pope Francis initiated the World Day of the Poor to be marked on the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time — Nov. 18 this year — it was easy for people to see this targeted at the familiar pictures that are all too real of Third World poverty.

The world commemorated the United Nations’ International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on Oct. 17, but you could be forgiven for not noticing. 

Live simply so that others may simply live. These words haunt me. These words inspire me. 

Over a 25-year span from 1990 to 2015 there has been a massive reduction in global poverty.