Last fall, when Roman Catholic archbishop Brian Dunn moved into his position, replacing longtime archbishop Anthony Mancini, he wrote a pastoral letter outlining four priorities for his sphere of influence, the Halifax-Yarmouth archdiocese.
Three of those are very specific to church affairs, including the religious teaching called catechesis.
The other priority is homelessness. “It was a real awareness of recognizing that there are lots of people who are homeless here in the area,” says Dunn, sitting with John Stevens, a project coordinator for the church, at a table in a room deep in the offices of the archdiocese on Brunswick Street in Halifax.
“And so we worked on that, we asked parishes to give a report on that priority and discovered that lots of parishes are involved with feeding the homeless or food banks.”