By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service IQALUIT, Nunavut — At the end of his six-day visit to Canada, Pope Francis, sitting in a wheelchair, said goodbye to Chief Wilton Littlechild, also sitting in a wheelchair. Littlechild, a 78-year-old lawyer, survivor of abuse in a residential school and former grand chief of the Confederacy of Treaty […]
Pope’s Canada trip: Beginning and ending with ‘sorry’
By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis said all the speeches he has prepared for his trip to Canada “begin and end” with asking forgiveness. In an early July interview, he acknowledged the “cruel way” the Catholic Church collaborated with the Canadian government in “colonization” by uprooting Indigenous children from their […]
Pope apologizes for treatment of Indigenous in Canada
By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY — Expressing “sorrow and shame” for the complicity of Catholics in abusing Indigenous children in Canada and helping in the attempt to erase their culture, Pope Francis pledged to address the issue more fully when he visits Canada. “For the deplorable conduct of those members of the […]
751 unmarked graves found at former Saskatchewan Catholic school
By Mickey Conlon Catholic News Service TORONTO — The Cowessess First Nation will put a name to each of the hundreds of bodies found at the unmarked graves on the former Marieval Indian Residential School, vows Chief Cadmus Delorme. “We will put a headstone and a grave to each of them,” Delorme said at a […]
More suspected church arsons continue across Canada
By The B.C. Catholic Staff Catholic News Service VANCOUVER, British Columbia — More churches across Canada have been destroyed or damaged by fires that police are describing as suspicious or suspected arson. Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Morinville, Alberta, investigated a fire at St. Jean Baptiste Church, a 100-year-old building that went up in flames […]
Pilgrims find healing, renewal in the waters of Alberta’s Lac Ste. Anne
By Kyle Greenham Catholic News Service LAC STE. ANNE, Alberta — As she battled the aching pains of stage 4 intestinal cancer, Evelyn Mercredi slowly lifted herself from her walker and stepped into the waters of Lac Ste. Anne expecting — and receiving — healing. “I’ve been suffering so much, it was so hard just […]
Toronto doctors lay out procedures for euthanasia for children
By Michael Swan Catholic News Service TORONTO — In a prestigious medical journal, doctors from Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children have laid out policies and procedures for administering medically assisted death to children, including scenarios where the parents would not be informed until after the child dies. The article appears just three months before the […]
Canadian bishops: marijuana use may soon be legal but still sinful
By Deborah Gyapong Catholic News Service OTTAWA, Ontario — Marijuana use across Canada may soon be legal in the eyes of the law, but it will remain a sin in the eyes of the church, said Canada’s bishops. With the exception of cannabis use for medicinal purposes, consuming marijuana violates the virtue of temperance […]
