OTTAWA — Novalis Publishing celebrated its 75th anniversary at Saint Paul University July 7 at a reception to honour its authors, editors and past and present staff.

Novalis began in 1936 when Oblate Father André Guay, who founded the Catholic Centre at the University of Ottawa, began publishing pamphlets to help ordinary Catholics better understand their faith in a post-Depression era.

OTTAWA - Bishop Raymond Lahey will have to wait several more months in jail before his sentencing on charges of importing of child pornography.

Already postponed from June to early August, the end of the sentencing hearing has been delayed until December because the forensic psychiatrist who examined Lahey is not available on the Aug. 4 and 5 dates that were set aside.

VATICAN CITY - Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church and other Christian communities have been seeking the right balance between a truly respectful dialogue with other religions and an obligation to share their conviction that the fullness of salvation is found in Christ.

Pope Benedict has been at the centre of the Catholic Church's search for that balance during his six years as pope and, before that, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

VANCOUVER — Hard core athletes usually retire when they get "up there" in their sporting years, usually in their late 30s or early 40s.

Not so for Olga Kotelko. The West Vancouver track and field star is in her 90s and believes she can compete forever.

Even in the time of St. Francis de Sales, 400 years ago, people felt they didn't know how to pray. Today, we live in the most secularized of all ages. It is easy to turn to things, not so easy to turn towards God. A million distractions beset us. Indeed, more than a secular age, ours might be characterized as a distracted age.

Still the human heart, yearning as it does for infinity, is tied to the earth. That is true in all epochs. So in his Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis not only wanted to encourage people to pray, he felt he must give them a method.

The "pope's newspaper" is a paper of information and ideas at the service of truth and justice, Pope Benedict said.

Pope Benedict inaugurated the Vatican's online news portal with a click, and then announced the launch with the first-ever papal tweet.

Fifteen-year-old Mohammed Majeed had grown so accustomed to the war raging around him that he lost his fear of the ordnance scattered on the ground in his neighbourhood.

The Vatican announced what it called the "sensational discovery" of an early image of St. Paul on the frescoed wall of a catacomb in Naples.

Civil unions "promote an unacceptable lifestyle, undermine the faith of the Church on holy Matrimony, and cause scandal and confusion," said Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, R.I.