An excerpt from Pope Francis’ message for Lent “Through the Desert God leads us to Freedom.”

Today we are faced with unbelievable violence in the Holy Land. We who follow the nonviolent Jesus can feel only deep pain, and an urgent call to bring an end to the violence both of Hamas and the Israeli government.

The CCCB’s pastoral letter from its Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace, released this week, calls on Canadian Catholics to serve Christian values by following seven commitments online.

Your description of Israeli actions in your Jan. 21 editorial “On the side of real justice” leaves a lot to be desired. What happened on Oct. 7 — and I certainly do not condone it — did not happen in a vacuum. Yet there is no sense of any understanding of what has been happening in Israel and Palestine for many years.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will unveil her government’s parental rights bill today, which will see parents’ permission needed for a child to change their name or pronoun from what they were given at birth.

Anna Farrow rightly points in her Jan. 21 story “Media buy-in drove graves social panic” to the preface of Chris Champion and Tom Flanagan’s book Grave Error. Champion and Flanagan stress that while contributors to the book do not speak with a unanimous voice, “all authors in this collection agree on the main point: that no persuasive evidence has yet been offered by anyone for the existence of unmarked graves, missing children, murder or genocide in residential schools.”

Sr. Nancy Brown, of the Archdiocese of Vancouver’s Anti-Human Trafficking Committee, says the Feb. 8 Feast Day of St. Josephine Bakhita should focus attention to combat the scourge.

Pope Francis’ message for the World Day of the Sick to be marked on Feb. 11, 2024.