Emma Venusio skates through a Team USA defender as a member of Team Canada. The student at Toronto’s Bishop Allen Academy captained Team Canada to a bronze medal at the recent World U-18 championships in Switzerland.Photo courtesy Hockey Canada
The Bishop Allen Academy cafeteria buzzed with an energy and enthusiasm earlier this month that went well beyond usual teenage boisterousness. Students and staff at this Catholic secondary school in Toronto fervently cheered as they watched one of their own, twelfth-grader Emma Venusio, captain Team Canada to bronze at the 2024 IIHF Under-18 Women’s World...
Protester holds up a sign in preparation for the Feb. 27 rally on Parliament Hill calling for a halt to expanding MAiD to the mentally ill.
Speakers at a rally on Parliament Hill demanded the federal government provide more life-saving supports for those deeply suffering from mental illness rather than giving them access to medical assistance in dying (MAiD). Expanding MAiD to people solely on the basis of mental illness was to begin March 17, but Bill C-62 is calling for...
Deacon Larry Worthen speaking at “What Wrong with MAiD?,” a February 8 event in Sherwood Park.
Nohl Macdonald is still in high school, but that hasn’t prevented him and many others in the Edmonton Archdiocese from speaking out against the expansion of assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada. Macdonald was amongst the crowd of more than 500 people (in person and online) who attended a Feb. 8 public lecture to equip Catholics and...
A wooden church damaged by a rocket attack during the Russian invasion of the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine in 2022. On the second anniversary of the invasion, Canadian Christians have written a pastoral letter calling for prayers and an immediate end to the war, (OSV News photo/Viacheslav Ratynskyi, Reuters)
Canada’s Catholic bishops have joined Christian counterparts in marking the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with an invitation for all to join in praying for peace. In a pastoral letter released Feb. 21, three days before the Feb. 24 anniversary of Russia’s full-scale attack on its neighbour, national representatives of the Catholic, Orthodox,...
Archbishop Guy Desrochers, (Diocese of Pembroke photo)
Benefitting from over seven months of hindsight, Archbishop Guy Desrochers considers it auspicious that the first liturgical reading he heard in late June upon accepting his appointment to the Archdiocese of Moncton was God calling Abram — later Abraham — to set forth to a new land bravely. Saying goodbye is, of course, challenging. The...
Hilary Swank as Louisville, Ken., hairdresser Sharon Stevens in Ordinary Angels, a faith-based movie filmed in Winnipeg for its climactic snowstorm sequence. The film is from Vancouver-founded studio Lionsgate. (Lionsgate)
To create the climactic snowstorm sequence so central to the upcoming faith-based film Ordinary Angels, Director Jon Gunn and his team turned to Winnipeg. He told Canadian Catholic News that accurately depicting Louisville covered in snow like it was on Jan. 17, 1994, during the North American cold wave was logistically challenging. “There was a...
Rome’s announcement of a third Canadian-born saint answers the prayers of Blessed Mother Marie-Léonie Paradis’ community and friends. The Quebec-born founder of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family will join St. Marie-Marguerite d’Youville and St. Brother André Bessette as the only Canadian-born canonized saints, the Vatican said in late January. The Friends of Mother...
The St. Raphael Palliative Care Home and Day Centre in Montreal. The Archbishop of Montreal has launched a legal appeal of Quebec’s end-of-life law that forces palliative care hospices to offer “Medical Assistance in Dying.” (Google Street View image)
In what could prove to be a landmark case for religious and conscience rights in Canada, Montreal’s Archbishop Christian Lépine has taken on the Attorney General of Quebec. In an appeal for judicial review submitted to the Quebec Superior Court on Feb. 5, Archbishop Lépine asked for an immediate stay of the application of an...
The president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms hopes Canadians will be more vocal about their civil liberties following a Federal Court ruling that Ottawa’s use of the Emergencies Act was not justified. (CNS photo/Patrick Doyle, Reuters)
The president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms hopes Canadians will better protect their civil liberties if there is another global health emergency in the wake of the Federal Court of Canada’s ruling against the Trudeau government’s use of the Emergencies Act in 2022. John Carpay said that when a small number of people...
Archbishop Miller welcomed Ottawa’s Jan. 29 decision to delay expanding MAiD to include mental illness but was disappointed that the government plans to proceed at a later date. On Feb. 1, the government paused the expansion for three years. (Alberto Biscalchin photo)
Catholic and anti-euthanasia observers across Canada are welcoming the federal government’s decision to pause the introduction of assisted dying for individuals suffering from mental illness, but expressing dismay that it still intends to expand access in the future. Vancouver Archbishop J. Michael Miller said he was disappointed by an announcement by federal Health Minister Mark...
