Among the action calls from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report on residential schools is an insistence that Pope Francis apologize in person to Canada’s aboriginal peoples.

“What are you doing in this bad part of the city?”

I looked around and saw a young man bent over and out of breath, his rollerblade wheels still spinning in the dark of the evening.

He had seen my clerical collar.  The “bad part of the city” he referred to is a Toronto neighbourhood known as “the track,” where prostitution is open and drugs are barely concealed.

This is a tale of two boys, neither of whom could function optimally in a traditional Ontario Catholic high school: uniform, attendance, homework.

It’s ordination season time to praise God for the incomparable blessing of being a Catholic priest. Every so often the calendar brings together various events that remind me that the priestly life is really like no other, offering a privileged witness to the work of God’s grace in the world.

Claims of Jacques Parizeau’s grand stature as a statesman might seem exaggerated to some outside Quebec but the pomp around his funeral was expected and understandable.

From his bureaucratic days in the Quiet Revolution through the political twilight that followed his performance during the 1995 referendum, Parizeau, who died June 1, was a critical catalyst in the transformation of French Canadians into Québécois. Quebecers love to send off their own with panache, and the former premier was indisputably one of their own.  

The truth has been well and tragically documented. Now comes the real work — reconciliation.

As advocates of same-sex marriage celebrated Ireland’s recent referendum, supporters of traditional marriage were left to lament yet another defeat. Meanwhile, I attended the sacramental union of my beautiful sister Alexandra to her dashing husband Michael.

On the solemn feast of Corpus Christi a counterintuitive thought occurs: Are too many people receiving Holy Communion too often?

The immediate repercussions from the Irish referendum where voters overwhelmingly supported same-sex marriage were obvious, but the long-term impact on the Church may come beginning this October.

Of all the rhetoric that followed Ireland’s referendum that legalized same-sex marriage, none was more absurd than the Toronto Star declaring the vote revealed “21st-century Ireland as a model of inclusivity and tolerance.” Nonsense.