WASHINGTON – A Novena for the Legal Protection of Human Life is being led by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Catholics are being encouraged to take part ahead of the Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

You could almost hear the champagne corks popping below the border when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his resignation. 

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump announced July 9 that his nominee for the Supreme Court is Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge in Washington and a Catholic who once clerked for retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Several years ago, a friend who had immigrated from the former Soviet Union told me, “Canada is the greatest place on Earth. It is a paradise.” While I felt flattered on behalf of my country to hear those words, I also wondered what in our country made him so effusive.

Anyone looking for hope from the June 15 Supreme Court of Canada decision on Trinity Western University can find it shining in the pages of the judgment itself.

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada’s decisions on Trinity Western University’s (TWU) proposed law school have delivered a severe blow to religious freedom, say advocates.

OTTAWA – Courts have no place in deciding a religious group’s rules, the Supreme Court said in a unanimous judgment May 31.

OTTAWA – Religious freedom in Canada is facing a “watershed moment” and may be “on an abyss of a revolutionary change,” argued lawyers in a Supreme Court of Canada case involving a Christian university’s proposed law school.

The Catholic Civil Rights League has become an unlikely ally of a Jehovah’s Witness congregation in a case coming before the Supreme Court.

In the 16 months between the Supreme Court decision and the passage of federal legislation regulating medically assisted death, I was intensely involved in discussions and debates within the medical profession, among Catholic health care providers, ethicists and clergy, and with national and provincial government bodies. I was trying to mitigate the harms of the decision, particularly in the protection of the vulnerable, and in defending the right of conscientious objection for physicians and faith-based organizations.

OTTAWA – A case coming this fall to the Supreme Court of Canada could have “a profound impact on all faith-based education, health care and social service facilities,” according to Canada’s bishops.

OTTAWA – Canada’s Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Civil Rights League have been granted intervener status in an important religious freedom case to be heard later this year by the Supreme Court.

VATICAN CITY – While violent protests continue to break out in the streets of Venezuela, Pope Francis urged the country's bishops to remain close to the poor and needy.

MOSCOW, Russia – The Jehovah's Witnesses have been banned as an extremist group in a Thursday Supreme Court decision that observers feared signalled a further step back for religious liberty.

CARACAS, Venezuela – Shortly after Venezuela's supreme court revised its decision effectively stripping the legislature of its powers this weekend, one of the country's cardinals responded by calling the reversal a mere “cosmetic retouching.”