Being a Western Canadian who has lived for many years in Quebec, it is more natural for me to want to bury a Trudeau than to praise one.

With the retirement and replacement of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone as the Holy See’s secretary of state, a difficult chapter in Vatican governance has come to an end. Over the last few years senior cardinals around the world openly criticized him. A delegation of Pope Benedict XVI’s most trusted cardinals went to see him, begging that he fire Bertone, and news of the meeting became widely known. In the meetings of cardinals before the conclave in March, the dominant theme was how to remedy his maladministration, and that indelicate topic was aired publicly in Bertone’s presence.

There is a time for everything and a time for every affair under the heavens. The author of Ecclesiastes could well have been writing a script for my summer.

The Quebec government’s intention to draft a Charter of Quebec Values was announced last year, but many details of how the charter will impact religious freedom were only leaked to the press in August. Reportedly, the legislation would ban most religious symbols from public institutions, and public employees would not be permitted to wear religious items such as hijabs, kippas, turbans and “ostentatious crucifixes.”

The chemical weapons massacre that killed 1,429 Syrians, mostly civilians, many of them children, was a monstrous act. “Abhorrent and repugnant,” said Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. “A moral obscenity,” said U.S. President Barack Obama.

As the new academic year beckons, we ought not forget some of the happy news of the summer, namely that The Catholic Register won the Cardinal John P. Foley Award as the best national newspaper by the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada. Congratulations to my colleagues for this recognition.

It’s difficult to find anything more perplexing than the tragic shooting death of teenager Sammy Yatim, the former Brebeuf College School student. It has caused a great gulf in the community with people lining up to either detest or defend police actions. One web site called the Toronto Catholic Witness Blog posted a story entitled “Sammy Yatim: A victim of the Toronto Gestapo Police.”

On the feast of St. Augustine 100 years ago the doors to the Scarborough seminary named in the saint’s honour officially swung open to welcome 51 aspiring priests into this new masterpiece of the Canadian Church.

It is early Saturday morning deep in mid-summer and I am lacing up my shoes in the locker room at the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association before a long run. If someone were to look up the word “bliss” in a dictionary, my smiling face might well appear as the definition.

Pope Francis’ homilies and talks have been very well received for their familiar examples and their straightforward practical applications. Over the summer he has spoken in a profound and challenging way on many occasions, whether addressing the young people in Rio or speaking to bishops. Yet one of his most practical — and well noticed — bits of advice was an aside in a talk he gave to seminarians and religious novices on July 6 in Rome.