This past weekend I enjoyed a visit by some campus lay missionary friends from Kingston, Ontario. As we reconnected over all-you-can-eat sushi, they inquired about my recent stay in Rome. It was clear from their questions that they, like most Catholics, hadn’t followed the Synod of Bishops too closely. In their defense, not everyone has ...read more

God works in mysterious ways, as you all know. The story I’m about to tell you now has a special link to my past…. About 12 years ago, I was living in a house full of consecrated women in the Regnum Christi Movement. I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but one young woman ...read more

As you may have read in previous posts, Salt and Light’s first angelic experience in the city said to offer just that, came in the form of a shiny statue (and might I add, quite the keepsake!). Our second however, came in the form of a tour guide, restaurant connoisseur, museum expert, knower of LA’s ...read more

This week on The World I Know we look at Kindness. In the first segment of this show, Rachel DeSa introduces us to Kindness and how it is lived in the school community. A grade five student at Guardian Angels school in the Toronto area at the time, she had Kindness written on her face. ...read more

“We must give the ‘holiness’ back to this Land.” stressed the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, His Beatitude Archbishop Fouad Twal.  Our visit with him was the last item on our itinerary, just hours before we flew back to Canada. His Beatitude explained that different groups want to control the Land – but they forget that ...read more

Besides the stations along the Via Dolorosa there are many holy sites to visit – areas where it is traditionally held that Christ was held in prison, where he was scourged, where he was condemned, and so on. You may have noticed during many of my blogs from the Holy Land, I have referred to ...read more

The section identified as the Via Dolorosa is in a market area in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.  Shopkeepers are earning their day to day living selling souvenirs, sweets, and everything in between – including lingerie, and a wide variety of T-shirts such as the Toronto Maple Leafs (with a Hebrew passage) and ...read more

As moving as the visit to Yad Vashem was for me, I was deeply disappointed to see the widely reported text that condemns Pope Pius XII.  The controversial display slams Pope Pius for not making enough of an effort to save Jews.  The display is small, the text brief, and for such a complicated and ...read more

This statue, Korczak and his Ghetto Children is a statue found at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.  It’s found in an area that remembers the over one million children who were victims of the Holocaust.  Over one million children. Dr. Janusz Korczak, who some of you may have heard of, wore many hats but as ...read more

I’m not one for souvenirs. In fact, I find them very stressful: will so and so like this, what if so and so has something like that, if I get so and so something then I have to get so and so something too…and so on. But heading to the Holy Land I did have ...read more