I was struck this past June when I read the Instrumentum Laboris, or working document for the 3rd Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will take place from Oct 5-19, 2014. The Synod, or meeting of Bishops, will focus on “pastoral challenges to the family in the context of evangelisation” which is ...read more

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been sharing with you some of the content from a conference in homiletics that I recently attended as part of St. Augustine’s Seminary’s 100th anniversary celebrations (Read part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4). There are many ways to prepare a homily, but preaching experts agree ...read more

Ever since World Youth Day 2002, my favourite Scripture passage has been the end of Matthew’s Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20. I think it’s because my middle name is Emmanuel. It means “God with us”. I love that Jesus promises us that he will be with us until the end of time. Today we celebrate a great ...read more

On May 24, Pope Francis will become the 4th pope to visit the Holy Land, 50 years after the visit of Pope Paul VI in 1964. It promises to be a historic visit as our beloved Pope goes to Amman in Jordan and then to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Most of us don’t realize that there ...read more

Recently I looked at something I wrote six months ago when Pope Francis had just been elected. Someone had asked me if he was going to be a progressive pope. My response was that I thought Pope Francis would be taking the Church where she needs to go. What I have found most surprising of ...read more

For the last two days I’ve been trying to imagine what our world would be like had Jesus never been born. It’s easy to say that The Church would not exist or that we would have no Pope. There would be no priests, deacons, religious sisters or brothers, nor there would be church buildings. But ...read more

Yesterday I was imagining a world without Christmas. That would mean no Christmas music and no Christmas movies.  But a world without Jesus would mean much more to our popular culture. I also just came from watching the screen adaptation of Les Miserables (isn’t Anne Hathaway fabulous as Fantine?). I couldn’t help but thinking that ...read more

While I dislike having to listen to Christmas music as early as November 25th, I do like that once a year radio stations all over don’t seem to have a problem playing music that mentions the name of Jesus or that glorifies God. This year, listening to Christmas music early in December I found myself ...read more

The top Catholic stories of this past year also included the Pope’s meeting with Fidel Castro and the Synod on the New Evangelization. Deacon Pedro sits with S+L producers Kris Dmytrenko, Alicia Ambrosio and Sebastian Gomes to explore the highlights of the Church in 2012. What do you think were the highlights of 2012? Share ...read more

One of the biggest questions of humankind is what happens after we die? Is there life after death?As Catholics we believe God is the ultimate judge of what we have done during our time on earth. He will decide if we go to heaven or to hell. The documentary Hellbound, directed by Kevin Miller looks at ...read more