VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis urged Ukraine's Catholic bishops to focus on the social and human tragedies unfolding in their country and avoid politicizing their role as Church leaders.

The other day a real-life discussion between pals reminded me of Unbroken, a movie opening on Christmas Day and based on the best-selling book and true story of a courageous American airman during the Second World War.

Project Ploughshares will not surrender.

Despite the loss of significant government contracts and grants, the 38-year-old organization is launching a new strategic plan, searching for a new executive director and settling into a new home in Waterloo, Ont.

VATICAN CITY - The early November feasts of All Saints and All Souls call Catholics to contemplate their ultimate destiny, hope in the eternal happiness of their beloved dead and remember the thousands of innocent people dying each day because of human evil and selfishness.

VATICAN CITY - When will people ever learn that war is madness and conflicts are only resolved by forgiveness, Pope Francis asked.

VATICAN CITY - War is just "senseless slaughter" and should never be seen as inevitable or a done deal, Pope Francis said.

WASHINGTON - In the days that followed Pope Francis' Aug. 18 remarks on U.S. airstrikes earlier in the month against Islamic State, the buzz was about whether the Pope had actually given his consent to them.

Should Christians be pleased that the expansion of the “Islamic State” in Iraq has apparently been slowed? Should they be pleased that this was the result of American air strikes? 

VATICAN CITY - As he dispatches a top aide to wartorn Iraq this week, Pope Francis made his most impassioned plea yet for the world to halt the “slaughter” of Christians and other religious minorities by Islamic extremists.

VATICAN CITY - It's time to stop war, fighting and conflicts, which do nothing but kill and maim, leaving children unexploded ordnance for toys and lives without happiness, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis said the world economic system inevitably promotes military conflict as way to enrich the most powerful nations.

What We Talk About When We Talk About War by Noah Richler (Goose Lane Editions, 376 pages, $24.95).

Noah Richler, son of novelist Mordecai, product of a liberal upbringing in Montreal and London, has crafted an interesting and aggressive defense of Canada’s history as a peaceful nation.

I was immediately struck by the question, “Who would read this book?” The hawks won’t want to read it since this book clearly implies — from the title to the picture of the haunted face of the Afghani woman on the cover — that war is on trial in these pages. Dedicated doves don’t need to read it, since they are already convinced of Richler’s arguments. Richler says he wrote it for the rest, the undecided, “the vast majority of Canadians … who depend on what they learn from others for the views they take on. “

Canada joined the war in Afghanistan in 2002 for just reasons but now it’s time to bring the troops home. So Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the right call in finally ending Canada’s physical engagement in that war-weary nation.  

Actually, it was overdue. Canadian troops still in Afghanistan on training assignments, about 900 of them, will all be home by March 2014, despite neither the surrender nor defeat of the Taliban.

Compared to most other larger, richer NATO allies, Canada contributed more than its fair share in lives and resources to the cause of the beleaguered Afghans. But exiting a war is more difficult than entering one.

Banning cluster bombs but then allowing Canadian pilots to drop them, Canadian soldiers to transport them and Canadian commanding officers to order them into the battlefield makes no sense, says the man who negotiated Canada’s participation in the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Former arms treaty negotiator Earl Turcotte, who led Canada’s effort to negotiate the Convention on Cluster Munitions, is warning Canada has misrepresented its signature on the 2010 treaty by proposing enabling legislation with very wide exceptions.

Twenty-five students from Barrie, Ont.’s St. Joseph’s Catholic High School experienced an Easter to remember as they travelled to France on a Remembering Vimy Ridge trip.

Accompanied by history teacher Trevor Carter, the students experienced a seven-day history class.

“The students did realize the sacrifice of the soldiers when they were sacrificing their comfort,” said Carter, describing the Easter Monday weather as typical for Normandy, France — wet, windy and cold. “But it was easy to handle the weather when you took into account what happened there 95 years ago.”