VANCOUVER, B.C. — When Catholic musician and nine-time Grammy nominee Matt Maher sat down with Bryana Russell, director of engagement for Sanctuary Mental Health, at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre in Vancouver, the tone was warm, honest, and deeply rooted in faith. The two shared music and personal stories about mental health with an audience of archdiocesan staff and Catholic mental health leaders, offering not just insight but hope.
Jane Waldock, coordinator of Mental Health Ministries in the Archdiocese, opened the event with gratitude and anticipation. “His music has come to me in some dark moments,” she said of Maher. “It will suddenly appear in my life to uplift me.”
Waldock highlighted the Archdiocese’s growing partnership with Sanctuary Mental Health as a catalyst for increasing awareness, accompaniment, and advocacy for mental health issues in the local and wider Church.
Sanctuary, a Vancouver-born nonprofit now active in over 100 countries, aims to equip churches to support mental health—not through therapy or clinical care, but through community and presence. “We’re not offering mental health care,” Russell clarified. “We’re saying the Church has a very specific role to play … not to see people as problems to be solved, but as persons to be offered God’s presence.”
For Maher, that mission resonated. “Most of what’s inspired it is the Church’s theology,” he said, reflecting on Sanctuary’s dedication to grounding mental health support in Catholic teaching. “What blew me away was … the level of commitment to provide resources for the whole Church.”
Much of the afternoon’s conversation revolved around stories—personal and sacred. Maher shared how his own family has been touched by mental health struggles—his father suffering from severe anxiety and depression, and his brother who was diagnosed with OCD later in life.
Maher says he’s come to appreciate the value of clinical mental health language within the spiritual life of the Church, especially when, “as I’ve looked at the lives of the saints,” he said, “I see the gift of clinical language combined with faith … reframing the journeys of even saints like St. Faustina.”
Russell brought into the conversation the image of the Christ of the Abyss—a submerged statue of Christ placed at the site of Italy’s first scuba diving death. It’s a powerful metaphor for Christ’s presence in our lowest places.
Christ’s presence in the darkest corners of creation should give us hope. “What would it be like to go to the depths of the ocean floor, into the darkest of the darks?” she asked. “That’s where Christ goes.”
Their stories moved from the poetic to the practical. One image that struck many was Russell’s reflection on the Gospel story of the paralyzed man lowered through the roof by his friends. “His friends’ faith set him free,” she said. “The Church has a specific role to play—that has to do with friendship, with carrying people to Jesus when they can’t get there on their own.”
Maher echoed that in his call for “spiritual friendship and hospitality,” grounding it in Benedictine tradition: Greet everyone as Christ. “That elevates a person’s dignity,” he said. “It helps lift them up, even if only for a moment.”
Throughout the event, music weaved together the reflections. Maher described his love for liturgical spirituality, where “Catholics hear more Scripture every Sunday than any other denomination.” The invitation, he said, is to bring our own stories to the Word of God.
Russell offered one final image: the dawn chorus. While in Australia with her four boys, she noticed birds singing before the sun had risen. She later learned that birds who had fared well in the night sing first—to signal hope to those who struggled. “That’s the Church too,” she said. “When we’re in a hard season, we need people to hold hope for us.”
The conversation closed with an invitation to carry one another, to speak and listen, and to show up for those struggling with mental health challenges. As Maher put it, “The first ministry we have as the people of God is the ministry of presence.”
At the beginning of August, Maher will be joining over half a million young Catholics, including a number of Vancouver pilgrims, in Tor Vergata, Italy, for the mainline event of the Jubilee of Youth.
To raise awareness and support the spiritual needs of those struggling with mental health challenges, the Archdiocese of Vancouver will host its first-ever Green Mass for mental health ministry on Oct. 24 at All Saints Parish, celebrated by Archbishop Richard Smith.
