On Sunday, August 6, we in the Anglican Church of Canada will pause to acknowledge the 30th anniversary of the Apology offered by Archbishop and Primate Michael Geoffrey Peers. This moment is more pronounced, in light of his death on July 27.

I humbly ask that the moments we take on Sunday and throughout the week should also reflect a thanksgiving for the ministry of Archbishop Peers. He prayerfully stepped into that historic moment and stood before the people, apologizing for a wrong done and for trauma committed by our church. The willingness of the church to participate in the residential school experience has resulted in a legacy of trauma that’s been handed down and is lived daily by Indigenous survivors and their families.
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Late last week we learned of the death of Archbishop Michael Peers, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada from 1986 to 2004. Our deepest condolences are extended to his wife, Dorothy, and his extended family.

Although +Michael retired as primate nearly twenty years ago, the legacy of his leadership continues in so many aspects of our life as a church. He often told the story of how he came to be a member of the church as a non-church attending young adult through the simple invitation of someone else. ‘Come and see’ was the invitation that brought him into the doors where he found, in faith, what he was seeking. He reminded us not to underestimate the power of invitation!
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After nearly two years of parish listening sessions and consultations at the regional, national and continental levels, theologian Catherine Clifford said she thinks Catholics the world over are beginning to understand synodality.

“This is like a long kind of apprenticeship,” said Clifford, who teaches systematic and historical theology at St. Paul University in Ottawa, Canada.

Clifford is one of 10 non-bishop delegates from North America who will participate as members at the Oct. 4-29 Synod of Bishops on synodality in Rome. On July 7, the Vatican announced the full list of synod participants.
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The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) welcomed the news from the Holy See’s General Secretariat of the Synod of the delegates appointed for the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops to be held this October. The two episcopal conferences serve as the coordinating entities for the North American region for the Synod, which is themed, For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission. The first session of the Synod will be held at the Vatican on 4-29 October 2023, and the second session is scheduled to be held in October 2024.
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Racism has been identified as one of the most significant challenges facing the North American region in the United States and Canada, a World Council of Churches (WCC) meeting has heard. Members of the North American region of the WCC’s Central Committee, its highest governing body between Assemblies, met during its 21-27 June meeting in Geneva.

“North America or Turtle Island, which is the Indigenous name for North America, is one of three continents that make up ‘The New World.’ The continent was new to 15th-century European explorers but old to the Indigenous peoples already living there,” said Rev. Dr Angelique Walker-Smith, WCC president from North America.
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In recent years, the movement towards Christian unity, which had quickened after the Second Vatican Council, seemed to have become mired in a quagmire of insurmountable difficulties. The synodal process launched by Pope Francis has changed all that. The extraordinary synodal journey is not one that the Catholic Church is embarking on alone. The recently published Instrumentum Laboris – working document – for the forthcoming October assembly in Rome devotes a whole section to Christian unity and how the Catholic Church can learn from other traditions. This was the theme of a recent meeting that brought Church leaders and theologians from the Catholic Church and six other Christian denominations to Durham, in the northeast of England.
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The World Council of Churches (WCC) is planning a year of activities in 2025 to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the first Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325, a key moment in the history of Christian faith and for the ecumenical journey today.

“The anniversary offers an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on the outpouring mission of God’s triune love and the implications this has for the common witness and service of the churches, it gives us the opportunity to ask afresh with others what Nicaea means for us today.” said WCC general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay.

The first Ecumenical Council was a gathering of Christian bishops in Nicaea, now İznik in present-day Türkiye, as the first attempt to reach consensus in the church through an assembly representing all of Christendom.

“Then, as now, the call to unity was heard within the context of a troubled, unequal, and divided world,” recalled Pillay.
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The Sacred Circle is a gathering of Indigenous Anglicans in Canada. This year, it took place between May 29th and June 2nd, and its journey of understanding and reconciliation has much to teach the Church’s understanding of God, spirituality, and the relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. The gathering took place around a fire.
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The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision today on the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) is a complex result that ultimately fails refugees.  The Supreme Court has allowed the appeal in part, sending the equality rights issue at stake back to the Federal Court,  and holding out for the possibility of the agreement being declared unconstitutional. But the Canadian Council for Refugees, Amnesty International Canada, and the Canadian Council of Churches are disappointed that the Supreme Court of Canada failed to decisively rule that the Safe Third Country Agreement violates refugees’ rights, exposing refugee claimants to further harms while awaiting another legal challenge.
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Catholic-Orthodox relations took a step forward this month with the publication of the first joint statement in seven years.

The document said Pope Francis’ hope for a synodal Church promotes “a more effective synodality,” which could eventually bring the Catholic and Orthodox Churches closer together on the issue.
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The Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church held its fifteenth plenary session from 1-7 June 2023 in Alexandria, Egypt, hosted by the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa.
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Archbishop Christopher A. Harper was installed today as the National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop and Presiding Elder of Sacred Circle, with pastoral oversight over all Indigenous Anglicans. The installation took place at a meeting of Sacred Circle 11, the national gathering and decision-making body for Indigenous Anglicans in Canada.

The Archbishop previously served as the Diocesan Bishop of Saskatoon.
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A leading Asian theologian says Pope Francis’ decision to include non-ordained women and men as voting members of October’s synod assembly is a “giant step” that will irreversibly change the Church’s decision-making processes.

Last month, the synod secretariat announced the Pope had authorised a reform to allow at least 70 non-bishops to be members of the 4-29 October synod assembly in the Vatican. This move will see women given a vote in a synod for the first time.
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Cette semaine, les membres du Conseil de direction du Conseil Canadien des Églises se réuniront au Monastère des Augustines, à Québec, pour leur réunion du printemps 2023 (du 24 au 26 mai 2023).

La décision de convoquer cette réunion dans une ville francophone a été prise par le Conseil de direction après une saison de discernement sur ce que le Conseil pouvait faire pour mieux comprendre la vie de l’Église et de ses membres au Québec et améliorer ses relations avec elle.
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The general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Rev. Dr. Jerry Pillay, has led a delegation to Moscow to meet with leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, including Patriarch Kirill. The 24-hour visit, which was taking place on Wednesday and Thursday, followed a similar WCC trip from May 10-13 to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

“Consolidation and unity in Ukrainian society, including especially among the majority Christian Orthodox believers, is an obvious necessity in the current circumstances faced by the nation and people of Ukraine” observed Rev. Pillay. “We visited Moscow to discuss engagement also by the Russian Orthodox Church in dialogue on the war and its consequences, including with regard to the deep divisions in the Orthodox family in this context,” Pillay reported, “and I am grateful for HH Patriarch Kirill’s commitment to exploring this possibility.”
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New forms of spirituality, revival of traditional Indigenous beliefs, rising immigration, and debates on secularism are blurring the line between religion and non-religion in Canada, scholar David Seljak says — part of what he calls a “permanent revolution” and the latest development in how religion has shaped the country’s social order.

Seljak, a professor of religious studies at St. Jerome’s University in the University of Waterloo, shared his views as the opening speaker at “Land, Law, Religion and Reconciliation,” a colloquium hosted by the University of Victoria’s Centre for Studies in Religion and Society (CSRS) May 4-6. His livestreamed presentation was the latest of the John Albert Hall Lectures, a series hosted by the university in which notable speakers discuss the changing role of religion in modern society.
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“Your Holiness, we humbly ask you to bless our synodal journey and to accompany us with your prayers, yours personally and those of your Church, that we may know how to put ourselves in the Spirit’s hands!”, it was with this particular request that Cardinal Mario Grech concluded his address of greeting this morning to His Holiness Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark, accompanied by an eminent delegation of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
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Pope Francis has continued his predecessors’ serious commitment to ecumenical dialogue, but he also makes ecumenical gestures that underline that seriousness. Meeting Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria, Egypt, Pope Francis paid tribute to the 21 Coptic martyrs murdered by Islamic State in 2015, noting they were killed for being Christian, not for being Orthodox. And he announced that they would be added to the Roman Martyrology, the book-length calendar of saints and blessed remembered by Catholics at Mass.
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Pope Francis’ decision in late April to include lay persons as full participants with voting rights in the upcoming Synod of Bishops is a significant step towards making the synod a body that more adequately represents and embodies an act of discernment by the whole entire people of God.

In exhorting the pastors of the local churches to embark upon a synodal process with the whole community of the baptized and listen to the voices of the marginalized, the pope has been seeking to reawaken the muscle memory of the ecclesial body.
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Leaders from the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity convened on 9 May to plan for the period 2023-2030.

The leaders met in a prayerful and collegial atmosphere to evaluate past collaboration between the WCC and the Roman Catholic Church during the 2013-2022 strategic period. They then went on to share the 2023-2030 WCC strategic objectives, and to reaffirm and refine future ways of working, with particular reference to the work of the Joint Working Group, WCC commissions, and collaboration with other dicasteries and Catholic organisations with reference to the current ecumenical and global landscapes.
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When King Charles III and his wife, Queen Consort Camila, are crowned on Saturday, the event will mark a historic juncture in Catholic-Anglican relations, as it will be the first time a Catholic bishop has participated in the ceremony in four centuries.

In a May 5 statement, the Archdiocese of Westminster in the UK, overseen by Cardinal Vincent Nichols, called Saturday’s coronation “an historic occasion for the nation, and also for the Catholic community.”

“For the first time in over 400 years, a Catholic Archbishop will take part in a Coronation in this country,” the statement said, referring to the fact that Nichols has not only been invited to attend the ceremony, but he will also give a blessing.
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Pope Francis is getting personally involved in making sure sacred items and cultural artifacts held in the Vatican Museums are returned to Canadian Indigenous communities.

“The restitution of Indigenous things of Canada is underway, at least we agreed to do so,” Pope Francis told reporters during his news conference on the plane trip back to Rome April 30 following his papal visit to Hungary. “I will now ask how that’s going.”
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After the Vatican’s recent repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery, I spent two hours speaking with three Indigenous people about the 500-year-old church doctrine that is as much the bedrock of Canada as the Canadian Shield.

I asked about its relevance, the potential of its undoing, and a question I had never asked before. Those discussions left me feeling both low-level dread and an almost irresistible sense of the possibility of grace. First, what is the Doctrine of Discovery?

“The story of the Doctrine is the story of how you can obtain other people’s land by magic,” retired judge Harry LaForme told the Globe and Mail in 2022. “You just sprinkle these papal bulls and you get it.”
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By the time the Catholic Book of Worship III hits its 30th birthday in 2024, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops hopes to have its replacement sitting in the pews.

Music for Catholic Worship (it is not to be called CBW IV) “will soon be entering the layout stage, which will be followed in due course by printing and marketing,” National Liturgy Office director Christina Ronzio told The Catholic Register  by email. “The CCCB will announce a publication date when the manuscript goes to the printer, as there are many variables to consider when deriving that date.”
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The Cross of Wales, a new processional cross presented by King Charles III as a centenary gift to the Church in Wales, will lead the Coronation procession at Westminster Abbey on 6 May. In a significant ecumenical gesture, the Cross of Wales incorporates a relic of the True Cross, the personal gift of Pope Francis to the King to mark the Coronation. The relics, set into the silver cross, are two small wooden splinters from the cross on which Christ was crucified.
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With sadness at the loss, and with joy for a life filled with love and justice, we share with you that Janet Somerville, past General Secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches (1997-2002), breathed her last on Sunday morning, April 16, 2023. We have lost a giant in the Canadian ecumenical movement. The first woman and the first Roman Catholic General Secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches, she embodied and pointed the way to the new pathway of faith, witness, justice, and peace grounded in the broader ecumenical movement of Anglican-Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions.
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The final document for the North American phase of the 2021-2024 Synod on Synodality was released April 12, capturing a process of dialogue and discernment that two participants described as ‘messy,’ ‘joyful’ and unifying — like the synod itself.

“It’s amazing what comes about when … you invoke the Holy Spirit in the conversation,” Julia McStravog, a theologian and co-coordinator of the North American team for the synod’s continental phase, told OSV News.
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The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) have issued the North American Final Document for the Continental Stage of the 2021-2024 Synod: For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission.

Begun in late 2022, the Continental Stage of the Synod was the second stage of the three-year process initiated by Pope Francis in October 2021. For the North American Continental Stage, the United States and Canada held twelve virtual assemblies: seven in English, three in Spanish, and two in French between December 2022 and January 2023. In total, 931 delegates and 146 bishops from Canada and the United States were appointed to participate in one of these twelve assemblies to share their reflections and responses to the Document for the Continental Stage (DCS) issued by the Holy See’s General Secretariat of the Synod in October 2022. Those reflections were brought together by the North American Writing Team to create the Final Document.
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The Catholic Church formally “repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery,'” a Vatican statement said.

Issued March 30 by the dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development, the statement said papal texts that seemed to support the idea that Christian colonizers could claim the land of non-Christian Indigenous people “have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.”
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In 1891, the same year Pope Leo XIII responded to revolutionary economic and industrial upheaval with the encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” the first car powered by electricity made its debut in America. More than 130 years later, dozens of Tesla employees in Buffalo, New York — a still heavily Catholic area — are alleging the electric auto manufacturer fired them in retaliation for attempting to form a union.

Tesla faces a complaint before the National Labor Relations Board over accusations the company fired more than 30 employees at its Buffalo facility within two days of workers launching their campaign Feb. 14 to unionize the Autopilot division at the Tesla plant. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has vocally opposed unions, but the company claimed the firings were unrelated to the union push.
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At least 494 religious buildings in Ukraine have been destroyed, damaged, or looted as a result of the Russian invasion—and seizure of religious buildings for use as Russian military bases increases the scale of destruction of religious sites in Ukraine, reports the Institute for Religious Freedom.

The Institute for Religious Freedom (IRF Ukraine), a non-governmental human rights organisation founded in 2001 in Kyiv, Ukraine, presented the data on the impact of the war on Ukrainian religious communities during the Summit on International Religious Freedom in Washington, DC on 1 February.
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For too many Catholics, ordained or lay, the responsibilities of the laity are those “delegated” by the priest or bishop.

As the continental assemblies for the Synod of Bishops make clear that hot-button issues — like sexuality, climate change and the role of women in the church — are not going away, the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life is pointing at a more fundamental issue at stake in learning to be a “synodal church”: What responsibility comes from baptism and unites all Catholics?
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A new collaboration of faith and science looks to equip Catholics with the knowledge and means to turn prayers into actions on the multitude of environmental challenges around the globe, from climate change and pollution, to the rapid loss of species and ecosystems.

“Our Common Home: A Guide to Caring for Our Living Planet,” is a just-released digital and print resource to help Catholic communities respond to Pope Francis’ calls to protect the created world and develop a more sustainable future. It was the result of a joint initiative between the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and the Stockholm Environment Institute, a scientific research and policy organization headquartered in the Swedish capital. The idea was first raised in 2020 by the Swedish embassy to the Holy See. The embassy funded the project.
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Members of the global Anglican Consultative Council took time out from their week-long 18th plenary meeting (ACC-18) in Accra today to visit a 17th-century castle on Ghana’s Cape Coast. At the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, many enslaved Africans were held at Cape Coast Castle before being transported to the Americas on British slave ships. After touring the castle and visiting the basement dungeons, known as slave holes, and the cells for condemned prisoners, members of the ACC took part in a Service of Reflection and Reconciliation at the adjacent Christ Church Anglican Cathedral.

They were joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, President of the ACC; the Archbishop of Ghana and Primate of West Africa, the host province of ACC-18, Cyril Ben-Smith; and the Archbishop of the West Indies and Bishop of Jamaica, Howard Gregory, attending ACC-18 in his role as Chair of the Commission on Theological Education in the Anglican Communion.
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A proposal for a piece of work to “explore theological questions regarding structure and decision-making [in the Anglican Communion] to help address our differences” has been welcomed by members of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).

Today (Tuesday 14 February), at their week-long meeting in Accra, Ghana, members of the ACC, gathered for their 18^th plenary meeting (ACC-18), affirmed “the importance of seeking to walk together to the highest degree possible, and learning from our ecumenical conversations how to accommodate differentiation patiently and respectfully.”
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The Episcopal Church’s representatives to the Anglican Consultative Council participated Feb. 14 in a discussion on the challenges of maintaining – and, in some ways, restoring – unity among the worldwide Anglican Communion’s 42 provinces at a time of stark divisions over human sexuality and marriage equality.

About 110 representatives from 39 of those provinces are in Accra, Ghana, this week for the 18th meeting of ACC, one of the Anglican Communion’s four Instruments of Communion and the only to include laity. The other three are the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, the Primates’ Meeting and the archbishop of Canterbury, an office known as the “focus of unity.”
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In a post-colonial world, the Church must find ways of demonstrating unity without one powerful group imposing its values on another, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said today.

In a presidential address to the 18th plenary meeting of the global Anglican Consultative Council (ACC-18), gathered in Accra, Ghana, Archbishop Justin said that “no one group should order the life and culture of another. Such control is often neo-colonial abuse.”
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On hearing that Montreal Bishop Frank Leo would succeed him as Archbishop of Toronto, Cardinal Thomas Collins immediately thought of Toronto’s first bishop, Michael Power. At a parish feast day Mass in Our Lady of Lourdes, downtown Toronto, Collins reminded the congregation how Toronto’s first bishop also came from Montreal and was also, as a priest, vicar of English-speaking Montrealers.

Collins did not mention Power’s early death from typhus ministering to Irish refugees on Toronto’s waterfront. Presumably, Collins hopes his 51-year-old replacement outlasts Power, who died at the age of 42, just five years after being ordained a bishop.
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Four letters and 26 promises from Canada’s bishops to Indigenous Canadians set an agenda for reconciliation that bishops like Calgary’s Bishop Bill McGrattan intend to act on before February turns into March.

McGrattan has scheduled meetings with members of the Indigenous Reconciliation Fund committee in his diocese. The committee — there are similar committees in dioceses across Canada — makes recommendations for local Calgary projects that could be funded by the national $30 million reconciliation fund Canada’s bishops have set up. McGrattan has forwarded the letters to Inuit, First Nations and Metis committee members and hopes for their feedback.
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From cleaning gutters to overhauling the heating system, a 10-point plan to help churches cut their carbon footprint is launched in time for Creation Sunday (Feb 12).

The guide suggests actions every church can take – starting with small steps and building up towards larger targets. It has been produced as part of the Church in Wales’ commitment to reach net zero carbon by 2030 and will offer churches a chance to show that “actions speak louder than words”.
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The Synod of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has decided to move away from the Julian Calendar which will involve changing the dates of several fixed liturgical feasts. For the time being, however, Greek Catholics will continue to celebrate Easter on a later date according to the old calendar.
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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, shares his thoughts at the end of the ecumenical pilgrimage with Pope Francis to South Sudan, and says Christians have grown accustomed to living apart, but it is rather the norm for the Church to work as one.
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Pope Francis asked the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury and the moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland to join him for his usual post-trip news conference on their flight back to Rome from Juba, South Sudan, Feb. 5.
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As part of their historic ecumenical pilgrimage to South Sudan, Pope Francis, Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury and the Rev. Iain Greenshields, moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, led an ecumenical prayer for peace Feb. 4 in Juba.
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The Archbishop of Canterbury has said “my heart breaks with sorrow for South Sudan” amidst ongoing violence and sectarian conflict in the country.
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With sadness, we announce the death of our friend and colleague, Sister Anne Keffer. She died Wednesday, Feb. 1 in Waterloo after a long illness. She will be remembered by her ecumenical colleagues for her sense of humour, compassion, and dedication to the path of unity.
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The President and the Vice Presidents of South Sudan have it within their “reach” to extend justice and compassion to all the people of the world’s youngest nation, the Moderator of the General Assembly has said.
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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has expressed his horror at the news that 27 people have been killed in Kajo-Keji, on the eve of his historic Ecumenical Peace Pilgrimage with Pope Francis and the Moderator of the presbyterian Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshields.
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As Pope Francis continues with his visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Vatican News speaks to an expert on the Zaire Rite, the liturgy developed specifically for use in that country.
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The conversation about medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Canada began out of a desire to ease the transition to death for terminally ill people experiencing intractable pain and suffering. After discussion and debate, Canada in 2016 legally permitted access to MAID for adults facing imminent death due to terminal illness, if they were deemed to be suffering intolerably.

In this debate some Anglicans have held an uncomfortable position, recognizing both the sanctity of life as a gift from God to be treasured and protected and the possibility that profound suffering and pain might be considered valid reasons to end one’s life. The church’s 1998 report and study guide Care in Dying stated that support for physician-assisted death constituted a “failure of human community.”
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