Pope Francis’ message to the plenary session of the Dicastery of Evangelization on March 15, 2024 in Rome.

As we journey through our life as Christians, seeking to grow in faith and wisdom, we discover we are hard-wired as human beings that bear God’s image and likeness to seek truth, beauty and goodness. These are properties of being, of God. He reveals this to Moses in Exodus chapter 3 when Moses asks God what His name is. God tells him, “I AM WHO I AM.”

I’ve read many — far too many — Holocaust accounts, and despite too much familiarity with the horrors and depravity, my emotions usually get the better of me. It’s not unlike from what I’ve heard from friends who have walked under the Auschwitz concentration camp’s entrance gates and its ominous “Arbeit macht frei” — “Work sets you free” — and are reminded of horrors past: you arrive knowing fully well what to expect, yet the tears still flow.

The first I heard of Fr. Ron Rolheiser was when I was a bushy-tailed editor of the Western Catholic Reporter in Edmonton still in my 20s. An article he had written showed up in the mail one sunny day in 1982 from Belgium where he was studying, and he wanted to know if we would publish it. The subject was revirginization, a possibility that had never previously crossed my mind. Nevertheless, the brilliance of the article astonished me, and I eagerly published it as well as another article he sent.

I never knew the lady’s real name. When I met her she said, “Just call me Chilli, that’s my street name.”

Readers of this column will know her as “The woman who lives in a doorway downtown.” It has been 10 months since we first met. At that time, she gave me some money to go and buy clothes for her from a nearby shop. When I returned, we sat on the step together as she poured out her grief for her son who was taken from her at nine years old.

Years ago, musician Audrey Assad released “I Shall Not Want” on an album called Fortunate Fall. She had discovered a Litany of Humility and set it to music. At a concert she did at my parish, she told us that she wrote it so that she would be inspired to pray it more often.

That has worked for me, and the chorus has become a measure of my spiritual health: “When I taste your goodness, I shall not want.”

Both at the national and international levels, Church leaders along with their supporting committees are making significant strides in addressing clergy sexual abuse prevention policies, as well as procedures for making complaints, and are beginning to explore how to accompany those who have been abused.

Although it is encouraging to hear about such progress, it is not realistic to expect that our bishops alone can discover and respond to all victim-survivor needs.

Those who are sincerely looking for proof that Indigenous children died in residential schools and were buried in unmarked graves should have attended the March 5-7 National Knowledge Sharing Event on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials in Regina.

St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland falls into the category of beloved mythology — unless you happen to be a snake, in which case you might have a lower estimate of it.

Statement of Dublin Archbishop Dermot Farrell prior to the votes on Ireland’s constitution that rejected proposed changes to marriage and family life.