VANCOUVER, May 28, 2014 – Pope Francis is on Twitter, and now a group of Vancouver-area Catholics are using the mass media to get their message across to the public. Catholic Voices, originally created for the 2010 papal visit to the United Kingdom, is preparing for its Canadian launch in Vancouver the second week in June, ready to give public voice to Catholic perspectives on social issues. Coordinator Peter Nation says the main focus will be making ordinary, young, media-trained Catholics available for media and public forums where a Catholic viewpoint is needed.

We are excited to announce that Austen Ivereigh and Jack Valero, the co-founders of Catholic Voices are coming to Canada. In addition to a busy schedule providing training to our “Voices” in their third week of training, they will also be giving some very interesting talks about Catholic Voices, Catholic Social Teaching, and Pope Francis. These talks are open to the public so we hope to see you there!

Re: “Foundation Forward” article (North Shore News, Sunday, October 27) The editor, Following on from last week’s “Viewpoint” lamenting the recent BC Court of Appeal’s decision not to legalize assisted suicide, Dr. Paul Sugar’s Palliative Support Foundation is, in my opinion, an example of a genuinely compassionate response to the challenge of the dying of.

Peter Nation was interviewed for an article about Catholic Voices Canada in the BC Catholic newspaper.

Magisterial statement supporting Catholic Voices’ mission and purpose. The use of means of social communication has an important role to play in order to reach every person with the message of salvation. In this field, especially in the world of electronic communications, it is necessary that convinced Christians be formed, prepared and made capable to transmit faithfully the content of the faith and of Christian morality.

Click to read an excerpt from an article called “Pope Francis and the Reform of the Laity” by Fr. Roger Landry published in the National Catholic Register on May 10, 2013.

The layperson is a layperson and has to live as a layperson with the power of baptism, which enables him to be a leaven of the love of God in society itself, to create and sow hope, to proclaim the faith, not from a pulpit but from his everyday life.  And, like all of us, the layperson is called to carry his daily cross — the cross of the layperson, not of the priest.”