Every immigrant who ever came to Canada dreaming of something better, something worthy of their best hopes, struggled, wished they had never come and wanted to go home has a soul brother in Br. Anthony Kowalczyk.

TORONTO - The Earth matters to students and staff at Cardinal Carter Academy for the Arts — it matters enough to inspire prayer, song and art.

For the first time in history the United Nations has voted to put rules in place to regulate the $70- billion per year international trade in conventional weapons. On April 2, just two weeks before the 50th anniversary of Pope John XXIIIs encyclical Pacem In Terris, the UN voted 154 to 3, with 23 abstentions, to adopt the conventional Arms Trade Treaty.

TORONTO - Ontario’s Catholic teachers are asking provincial Finance Minister Charles Sousa for freedom — freedom from bureaucrats, freedom from standardized tests, freedom to teach all kinds of students from four-year-olds to special needs kids to adult learners.

TORONTO - The religious leaders who run food banks, shelters and community services want this spring’s Ontario budget to boost incomes for minimum-wage employees and people on Ontario Works.

Unverifiable reports in the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore and MacLean’s magazine have clarified Cardinal Marc Ouellet didn’t just tell media before the conclave that becoming pope would be a nightmare, he also threw his support to Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio before the fifth and final vote that chose Pope Francis.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has left his successor with some unfinished business that Jesuit economist and theologian Fr. Bill Ryan would like to put at the top of the new pontiff ’s agenda.

There’s nothing wrong with dissolving the Canadian International Development Agency to make it part of a new Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, says the Catholic bishops’ development agency. But there’s a host of devils in the details.

Pope Francis had a message for Canadians at his inaugural Mass — a message of peace, simplicity, reconciliation and hope — according to several members of the official Canadian delegation in Rome on the Feast of St. Joseph to witness the beginning of a new papacy.

This year some 300 million Christians who claim apostolic succession back to the time of Christ will celebrate Easter 35 days later than Roman Catholics.