The richness of a gentle August day was all round. A drive in the countryside featured lush fields ready or almost ready for harvest, with merry little breezes riffling through. Such a day will always make me think of Margaret O’Gara, for I heard the news of her Aug. 16 death during that country drive in 2012.

TORONTO - James Ginther wants the truth. He finds it by getting help from people all around the world.

IQUITOS, Peru - As floodwaters rose with heavy rains in this Amazonian city, Graciela Tejada and her neighbours found greasy slaughterhouse offal, human feces and used hypodermic needles floating practically to their doorsteps.

Now is the time Catholics need to prepare for a new urgency and a new way of thinking about our tradition and the natural world. We have to claim a new or renewed intimacy with creation.

For years the outdated library in the basement of the Bathurst diocesan offices saw more mice and rats than readers, said Bishop Daniel Jodoin. But when pipes burst during the spring thaw, new doors were opened to our nation’s past.

VATICAN CITY - The presidents of the bishops' conferences of Germany, France and Switzerland decided their preparation for the Synod of Bishops on the family could benefit from listening to theologians, biblical scholars and canon lawyers from all three countries, said the spokesman for the German bishops.

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

TORONTO - The biggest theological conference in Toronto since 1967 brought more than 200 scholars to the University of St. Michael’s College to look at the same subject theologians were wondering about then — the Second Vatican Council.

An open letter to Roman Catholic bishops

Dear Bishops

I write to you as a loyal son of the Catholic Church, with a particular request: Could you make an addition to our eucharistic prayers to include an explicit invocation for other Christian churches and for those who lead them?

With Catholics anticipating Pope Francis’ upcoming encyclical on the environment, many are looking to discuss how they can be stewards of creation within their own communities.

When you are about to turn 100 there’s a tendency for people to fuss over you and ask silly questions.

When people began asking 99.9-year-old Fr. Michael Lapierre what it felt like to turn 100, he told them “I don’t have a choice.” On May 2, Canada’s oldest Jesuit will take his 100th birthday in stride.

VATICAN CITY - Hearing a Catholic's confession should be awe-inspiring for a priest, an experience that makes him look at his own life and willingness to convert, Pope Francis told a group of seminarians, new priests and priests who hear confessions in the major basilicas of Rome.

VATICAN CITY - Christianity has something to say about human dignity, and "it would be a shame" if differing positions on the sanctity of all human life or on marriage were to increase the divisions among Christian churches and communities, Pope Francis said.

ROME - Pope Francis' decision to hold two synods of bishops on the family with a year of consultation and reflection in between fits in exactly with this theological approach to pastoral planning, which emphasizes studying the reality, reflecting on it and, only later, taking action, said retired German Cardinal Walter Kasper.

For two days, a constant stream of mourners filed past Jean Beliveau’s casket in Montreal’s Bell Centre. His widow, Elise Couture, was present to receive the sympathies from dignitaries, her husband’s teammates and ordinary fans alike.