Political events and news in effecting Catholics and Catholic concerns in Europe.
February 9, 2022
The Freedom Convoy ensnarling the nations’s capital has led to the cancellation of Masses in churches near downtown Ottawa.
February 8, 2022
MONTREAL -- On Jan. 31, a bailiff knocked on the door of the 200-odd units of the Mont-Carmel Residence, a private seniors' residence in Montreal. Auxiliary Sister Suzanne Loiselle, five other of her sisters, and all the residents received a notice of eviction from him.
VATICAN CITY -- At the age of 94, retired Pope Benedict XVI said he knows he will soon stand before God's judgment and he prayed that he would be forgiven for his shortcomings, including in handling allegations of clerical sexual abuse.
February 7, 2022
FRANKFURT, Germany -- The Synodal Path of the Catholic Church in Germany wants laypeople to be able to participate in choosing bishops and wants the church to have women deacons.
VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis told an Italian interviewer that forgiveness is "a human right."
February 6, 2022
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) Feb. 13 (Jeremiah 17:5-8; Psalm 1; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20; Luke 6:17, 20-26)
“Cursed is the one who trusts in mere mortals” does not sound like a ringing endorsement of people or an encouragement to human relationships. Many would see such statements as extreme and cynical.
Rudy Sylvan knows first-hand what it feels like to compete on the international stage.
February 5, 2022
I am often asked to speak to groups about my experiences on the streets of the city, and what it means for each of us to be the Church on the Street. Recently at the end of one of these talks I was asked, “What do those on the street need the most?” I could do no better than to quote one of my heroes, Fr. Greg Boyle who works with the gang members in Los Angeles and who said, “Gang members need hope. They live with a lethal absence of hope.”
What might be called the messy, Ukrainian spirituality of democracy is threatened by more than 100,000 Russian troops on the border and a propaganda war that pretends Ukrainians and Russians are all part of one Orthodox and Slavic nation, according to the founder of the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies in Toronto.
February 4, 2022
Whether or not Russia invades, Caritas Ukraine is already at work getting people in Eastern Ukraine through all the small crises, the human-scale disasters of a war that’s dragged on for eight years.