There’s just something about people from the prairies. Maybe it is the familiarity, and the feeling that everyone is a neighbour. Or it is the humility that comes from knowing their place under the grandeur of the endless sky. Perhaps it is the gentleness of the people who see life begin with just one kernel ...read more

As we reported on Perspectives and throughout the blog, Cardinal William Levada, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was visiting Ottawa and Kingston, Ontario earlier this week.  His celebration of Mass at Ottawa’s Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica will be broadcast on Salt + Light tonight, March 11th, at 8:30pm ET/9:30pm ...read more

From Sunday to Wednesday, March 14-17th, Toronto will be hosting the national vocation and formation conference at the Courtyard Marriott in downtown Toronto.  It is an event organized by the National Association of Vocation and Formation Directors (or NAVFD), and they expect close to 200 religious and lay participants from Canada and the US.  The ...read more

These days it’s easy to be discouraged reading the news about never-ending scandals popping up here and there, or about the shortcomings of various role models, or the interviews of well-known people criticizing one another, and so on. I’m sure that we all can think of examples and that we all recognize an overwhelming flow ...read more

It’s been a horrible week at the Vatican, and it’s only Tuesday. Last week, German bishops addressed claims that youth had been sexually abused by clergy in various Catholic schools. News surfaced that boys had been abused at an institution in Regensburg where Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, the Pope’s brother, had later been choirmaster. Press reports ...read more

It’s a grey, cold, windy, rainy day in Rome… and I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen! This is officially day five that I’ve been here as S+L’s Vatican Correspondent. I am now officially accredited to the Holy See Press Office. It only took four days, three paper clips, two photos, and ...read more

Posted below is a transcript of Cardinal William Joseph Levada’s address on Anglicanorum coetibus, delivered March 6th in Kingston, Ontario. The American Cardinal, who serves in the Vatican as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was introduced by the chaplain of the Queen’s University Newman Centre, Fr. Raymond de Souza. Note ...read more

Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta delivered the first of three lectures for the Year of the Priest at the Baltimore Basilica this past Sunday.  The title of the first lecture was “Father-Brother-Friend; Bishop-Priest Relationships.”   See below for the full text: Archdiocese of Baltimore John Carroll Lecture Father, Brother, Friend: Bishop-Priest Relationships +Wilton D. Gregory, ...read more

Tony Gagliano, Chairman and CEO of St. Joseph Communications and Chair of the Board of the Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation delivered this keynote address during the annual Toronto Police Services Communion Breakfast on Sunday March 7, 2010 at the Colony Hotel Conference Centre in downtown Toronto. Toronto Police Services 46th Annual Communion Breakfast ...read more

The following is an excerpt of Saturday’s address by Cardinal William Joseph Levada in Kingston, Ontario, entitled, “Five Hundred Years After St. John Fisher: Benedict’s Ecumenical Initiatives to Anglicans”. Visible union with the Catholic Church does not mean absorption into a monolith, with the absorbed body being lost to the greater whole, the way a ...read more