2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
The welcome for Pope Francis on his visit to Iraq was a memorable first step. Now hope must become reality, Susan Korah reports.
A calculated risk in the face of pandemic fears and potential security threats, the visit of Pope Francis to Iraq brought incalculable benefits, say members of the country’s indigenous Christian community.
Traumatized by years of violence and hate w...
Susan Korah reports on a Canadian family that helped solve the mystery of a teenage girl’s life and death at Auschwitz.
Hana Brady could be another Anne Frank except she did not leave a diary.
But the suitcase that 13-year-old left behind when she died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz concentration camp continues to teach millions of children around the world the import...
Along with COVID-19 and a sanity-challenging American election, 2020 made rampant the demolishing of monuments. Gavin Miller warns iconoclasm is more than vandalism: it threatens civil life.
About a year ago, I saw a statue of the Pieta that someone had donated to my friend’s parish. It was placed in a relatively inconspicuous part of the church campus and was frankly hideous, with distorted limbs and blunt facial features. As pastor of the par...
Canada’s Constitution gives paramountcy to peace, order and good government (POGG), but Don Hutchinson argues bills on conversion therapy and medically assisted death prioritize progressive expediency.
As the Second Session of the 43rd Parliament started last month, the Trudeau Government promoted two bills as high priority in the legislative queue. Both make use of the Criminal Code to tread the constitutional line between federal and provincial jurisdic...
Convivium contributor Don Hutchinson sets up resumption of Parliament by explaining the historical significance of the Speech from the Throne – and its potential political pitfalls for Justin Trudeau.
The Speech from the Throne is a key moment in the life of any government. Today’s will be no less important for the minority Trudeau Government, which will seek to balance the confidence of the House of Commons and the confidence of the Canadian people in i...
Russell Kuykendall says the musical dismissed by some as white bread civics lite brings hip hop attitude to U.S. constitutional history.
The musical Hamilton poses the question of how the American Revolution might have unfolded had the principals been people of colour. All principal roles portraying Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Burr, Lafayette, Laurens and the Schuyler sisters ar...
Raymonde Gauthier, co-curator of a current exhibit at Montreal’s Hôtel Dieu museum, explores with Peter Stockland how the 19th century partnership of Bishop Ignace Bourget and architect Victor Bourgeau shaped the city’s spiritual landscape.
About 40 years ago, Raymonde Gauthier found a PhD topic by glancing out the window of her small apartment at the corner of Montreal’s St. Laurent Boulevard and Sherbrooke Street.
Through the heat of Quebec’s post-1960s anti-clerical nationalist eupho...
Retiring this summer after 46 years as editor of the Chesterton Review, Father Ian Boyd tells Peter Stockland why the great Christian journalist has such enduring appeal and importance.
At dinner during an event I attended last weekend, a young journalistic rising star of decidedly Calvinist conviction acknowledged G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy ranks among the most inspiring books he’s read.
The confession draws surprisingly ...
Energy wasted defending or toppling statues should instead power a national conversation about what, why and how we collectively commemorate our pluralistic pasts, Peter Stockland writes.
Pictured: a memorial mural found in Belfast for those who lost their lives in conflict. Photo by Peter Stockland.
For her book Talking Stones: The Politics of Memorialization in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland, Elisabetta Viggi...
Questions about the Christian Messiah’s skin colour offer a fascinating complex of archeological, historical, migratory, linguistic and theological answers that ultimately won’t matter, Don Hutchinson writes.
Questions about the whiteness of Jesus, White presence in Bible times, and the whiteness of the North American Church have become widespread in public debate during recent months. It’s not that there wasn’t already discourse about these points, but discussi...
Father Raymond de Souza reminds us that bloodshed rarely ends the instant freedom rings out. When the Berlin Wall fell, tyrants still murdered the innocent.
Thirty years after the breaching of the Berlin Wall, there has been much attention to the victory of freedom in the Cold War. The Cold War would not formally end for another two years, when the evil empire itself, the Soviet Union, would be erased from the ...
Convivium’s Father Raymond de Souza rebuts critics of Andrew Scheer for focusing on his religious beliefs while forgetting it was historically outlandish to expect he’d win Election 2019.
About the election, three observations: one about history, another about campaigns, and the third about religion.
First, history matters. Amongst those who desired a Conservative victory, there has been much talk about how Andrew Scheer and his team...
On the feast of Pope St. John Paul II, we need to heed his messages of hope, courage and conviviality in the aftermath of a divisive election, writes Convivium's Rebecca Darwent.
A country divided in blue, red, orange, turquoise and a splash of green. The top-two parties’ popular vote divided with a margin of a mere 1.4 per cent, other ballots cast towards a split up of three other parties, radically different and yet, unequivocally...
During his summer travels, Father Raymond de Souza finds his way to San Jose where the airport honours a little-known politician with a story that deserves to be told.
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – Summertime is a time for travels, for being on the road, or more accurately, in the air.
Airport names matter to me. In that regard I am happier flying out of Kingston – Norman Rogers airport, named after a distinguished Queen’...
In this week's essay from Northern Ireland, Convivium's Peter Stockland encounters a young man whose grandfather was murdered on Bloody Sunday 1972 and waits to hear loyalist-unionist drums beat again in Belfast this Friday, July 12.
This is part two of Convivium’s series on Northern Ireland and its history as it exists today. Click here to read part one: “A Beacon of Hope and Warning.”
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Convivium Editor-in-Chief Father Raymond de Souza looks at expansion plans for the capital’s grand old Chateau Laurier and apprehends an act of architectural vandalism.
When Cardus opened our Ottawa office three years back, we were proud to be in the neighbourhood – Parliament a short walk west, the National Gallery and Notre Dame Cathedral a short walk north. Now the neighbourhood appears to be going to heritage.
...
Thursday marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day. But, writes Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland, there is urgency this time we remember: we are at risk of forgetting the sacrifice that earned the freedom we still enjoy today.
There’s a sense of critical urgency about observing the 75th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy that will be marked on Thursday.
It’s an urgency born of the practical fact of life that the surviving combatants being feted ...
The role of history is to remind us that the truth can only emerge from what has come before us. Where we were still matters, writes Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland, if only so we can more truly understand where we are.
My son is a professional historian. I, as he constantly reminded me during his undergraduate days, am a mere journalist.
I suspect, though, that his eagerness to pursue history as his life’s passion was nurtured by a childhood spent listening to the ...
The New England Patriots won yet another glorious football victory on the 100th anniversary of the first Irish republican parliament being founded. Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland argues the apparent coincidence is providential proof of the power and necessity of great institutions.
Several Canadians might look at the calendar today and fail to remember that Jan. 21 marks the 100th anniversary of the first Irish Republican Dáil – or Parliament – in 1919.
A somewhat smaller number will be unaware that the New England ...
In her review of Natalie Morrill's debut novel The Ghost Keeper, Convivium's Rachel DeBruyn reminds us that although abundant historical fiction has already been set in the World Wars, fiction retains the power to express truth even where facts are lost.
Whenever I peruse the historical fiction section of a bookstore, or the historical flicks that make their way through theatres, a question circles back to me: Why have such a wealth of films and historical fiction been set in the World Wars? Out of the thou...
By removing a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, the City of Victoria has gone down the perilous path of erasing history rather than learning from it, Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett argues. What next? Renaming Montreal’s Trudeau airport because the former PM formally called for assimilation of Indigenous Canadians?
“We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.”
Rarely have more sage words been spoken about history and how we understa...
This week Fr. Raymond de Souza reflects on Julie Payette's transition to Canada 29th governor general – in particular, the choice of her coat of arms and motto.
The Governor General of Canada customarily is granted a personal coat-of-arms upon assuming office, and it was the case this week when Julie Payette was installed as Canada 29th governor general.
Julie Payette is the fourth ...
Convivium editor-in-chief Father Raymond J. de Souza reflects on the twentieth anniversary of the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Mother Teresa, as well as their legacy of beauty.
The royal women have been much in the news. Diana, Princess of Wales, died twenty years ago last week. Her posthumous daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge, announced on Monday that she is expecting her third child. And later this autumn the Queen will ...
Convivium contributor Alan Hustak reports from Montreal on the construction plans slated for the mass grave of 6,000 Irish who died in the mid-19th century of famine.
A battle is brewing in Montreal that mixes faith, history and politics, and could pit the city Irish community against Hydro Quebec, Mayor Denis Coderre and even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Each year, on the last Sunday of May, hundreds of Montrea...