It is my honour to inform you that the Holy Father has accepted the invitation of the Bishops of Canada to visit the Church in Canada in the context of a pilgrimage of healing and reconciliation with our Indigenous sisters and brothers. The Holy Father has released a statement which
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The news of the discovered unmarked graves this spring at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia has jarred our Catholic conscience into grappling with a Canadian reality and a matter of fact concerning our Church’s history. This issue was experienced in a variety of ways throughout our Diocese.
Continue readingPrayer as a means of drawing people to Christ is a primary and essential task. Benedict XVI explains that “people who pray are not wasting their time, even though the situation appears desperate and seems to call for action alone.” (Deus caritas est, # 36). Prayer should be the foundation
Continue reading24 September 2021 We, the Catholic Bishops of Canada, gathered in Plenary this week, take this opportunity to affirm to you, the Indigenous Peoples of this land, that we acknowledge the suffering experienced in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. Many Catholic religious communities and dioceses participated in this system, which led
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September 16, 2021 To the priests and deacons of the Diocese of Pembroke This sixteenth day of September, 2021 Dear confreres: In recent days, I have been asked if clergy would be permitted to write a letter requesting that people be exempted from the requirement to be vaccinated for employment
Continue readingThe Brooklyn Tabernacle Evangelical church has emerged as one of the largest Christian communities in New York City, but its journey to this point was far from straightforward. When Jim Cymbala assumed the role of pastor in the early 1970s, the church counted only about 30 members and teetered on
Continue readingSeptember 12, 2021 The decision whether or not to be vaccinated is a personal decision of conscience. In the present context, it is morally licit to be vaccinated, but it is not a moral obligation. There are too many grey areas for there to be a hard-and-fast position for or
Continue reading20 August 2021 The Executive Committee of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) wishes to address recent reporting on the Corporation for the Catholic Entities Party to the Indian Residential School Settlement (CCEPIRSS). As a Committee, we have been profoundly saddened by the recent uncovering of unmarked burial sites
Continue readingEvangelization experts suggest that to grow a church, leaders should keep the front doors wide open, create multiple side entrances, and ensure the back door is securely closed. In this analogy, the front doors represent welcoming weekend services for non-believers, the side entrances symbolize small groups that reach out to
Continue readingJesus said to His disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). God desires to fill us with the Holy Spirit so that
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