With great promise can come deep sorrow.

Catholics have been reminded repeatedly they must separate Church and State. In government, medicine, law, public policy or discourse, we are expected to leave Him who shapes our life and our conscience at home. 

My daughter, skyping from her home in Switzerland, remarked how quiet it was.  Very little traffic about, she said — all shops shut.

Since Feb. 7, women’s leader Louisiane Nazaire has hardly dared to leave her home in the city of Jérémie in southwestern Haiti. 

It sometimes seems that you are playing for the losing team.

The cross I wear around my neck each day is a relatively large wooden one made by young people living in the poorest and most dangerous areas of Colombia. It is one of hundreds of thousands that they made as part of a project supported by Development and Peace. The crosses were given as a special gift from St. John Paul II at the World Youth Day papal Mass in Toronto on July 28, 2002. 

I was troubled to hear my Ottawa colleague describe what she saw Dec. 8 on Parliament Hill. 

Christmas packages come in all sorts, shapes and sizes.

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

It’s difficult to equate dynamic evangelization with the reality of shrinking numbers of parishes, priests, parishioners and active churches. But evangelization is exactly what the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth hopes to achieve through a strategy called New Parishes: Stronger Together.