ST. PETERSBURG,  Fla. -- Nobody in the Catholic press does it better than Michael Swan.

The reporting and photography of veteran journalist Michael Swan was honoured 16 times as Catholic Register staff received a stunning 31 awards at a pair of gala celebrations held at Laval University.

ST. LOUIS – He was far from a one-man band but associate editor Michael Swan led the parade as The Catholic Register marched off with an all-time best 21 awards at the annual Catholic Press Awards gala.

TORONTO - The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity will culminate next month with a final liturgy uniting Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians at the Chaldean Cathedral of the Good Shepherd in the northwest corner of Toronto.

Editor’s note: Launched almost 30 years ago as a project at Toronto’s St. Michael’s College School, the Out of the Cold program is a remarkable story of Christian outreach that last winter provided food and shelter to more than 12,000 homeless men and women. That success is celebrated in a just-released book by Catholic Register associate editor Michael Swan. In this excerpt from Out of the Cold: A history of caring, Swan recounts how the program found a home in one downtown Toronto church.

Out of the Cold: A history of caring
By Michael Swan

From a modest storefront that opened 28 years ago to serve hot meals to a handful of homeless people, Out of the Cold has developed into an acclaimed winter program that last year provided food and overnight shelter to more than 12,000 homeless people.

Catholic Register associate editor Michael Swan tells the remarkable story of how Out of the Cold evolved from modest beginnings as a weekend project at a Toronto Catholic high school into an extraordinary example of Christian love and caring. It’s a story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

Canadian orders: 126 pages / Paperback / 5.5"x8.5" / $14.99 + $3.00 shipping / ISBN 978-0-9948716-0-2 / © 2015 Catholic Register Books

US orders: 126 pages / Paperback / 5.5"x8.5" / $14.99 + $5.00 shipping / ISBN 978-0-9948716-0-2 / © 2015 Catholic Register Books

International orders: 126 pages / Paperback / 5.5"x8.5" / $14.99 + $10.00 shipping / ISBN 978-0-9948716-0-2 / © 2015 Catholic Register Books

PHILADELPHIA - People were surprised, at least the professional talkers on CNN were surprised, that Pope Francis tossed his script at the Festival of the Families Saturday night.

It’’s actually hard to gather a sense of how New Yorkers are responding to Pope Francis. Out on the street, it seems like there are no native New Yorkers. Everybody is either a tourist or part of a visiting TV crew, filing their own reports on how New Yorkers are greeting Pope Francis.

Pope Francis may have kickstarted a process of re-establishing diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States more than a year ago, but this Pope has no intention of leaving well enough alone.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Catholic Register writers and editors were honoured with 10 awards, including three first-place prizes, at a gala banquet held June 20 to recognize excellence in Catholic journalism.

On the way out of Manger Square, down a steep drive and onto the commercial street, a woman in fashionable trekker gear with a $1,000 Canon digital SLR slung from her shoulder pulls out her phone and aims the little plastic lens at the street generally. You have seen pictures like the one she has just taken — slightly skewed vistas of a lot of pavement and distant pedestrians and colourful street signs and maybe the hood of a passing car.

I have been living this last week in a convent with habited nuns who describe themselves as semi-contemplative. They are Bridgettine Sisters, a 20th century American revival of a Medieval Swedish order.

While Pope Francis says Mass in Manger Square, Bethlehem there will be peace talks in the Middle East.

If there's anything religion is not, it is most certainly not a refuge from politics. Pope Francis is still several days from arriving in the Holy Land, but the politics of his visit are already raging.

The last fully and completely Christian village in the Middle East is home of the only beer manufactured in the Palestinian Territories. Taybeh beer is named after the town of 1,300 Palestinian Christians within sight of the Dead Sea.