The Catholic Association of Saskatchewan convention will be held in Regina in October.

By Peter Oliver, Executive Director of  the Catholic Health Association of Saskatchewan (CHAS)

It’s a Tuesday morning.

The first order of business is to respond to an inquiry from Edna Hodgson about registering for the CHAS convention on Oct. 23 and 24. Edna is president of the Saskatoon diocesan CWL council.

Next, I reviewed a newsletter from the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and listened to an interview with Alex Schadenberg and Kelsi Sheren about organ donation and presumed consent.

The concept of presumed consent in this context suggests that doctors may remove a vital organ from a patient who is not yet deceased, and this act causes their death. The rationale is that once a patient on life support has no chance of survival, doctors may remove their organs for donation while the organs are still viable.

I thought, “This is dark stuff,” and made a mental note that I need to learn more about this.

Back to my inbox and an e-mail from Linda Maddaford featuring the September 2025 newsletter from the Regina Diocesan Catholic Women’s League (CWL).

The first article, “National CWL Convention in Toronto,” was particularly interesting. It discussed several key topics, including a strong focus on mental health. Dr. Gerry Turcotte gave a speech that used a metaphor from the Japanese art of Kintsugi to highlight the link between mental health and social justice.

Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with a compound made of gold or silver. The philosophy is to treat the breakage and repair as part of the object’s history and its repair becomes something beautiful, not something to be hidden. The speech encouraged participants to view living with a mental health challenge in the same way.

Then the CWL newsletter introduced me to the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations (WUCWO) and their President General, Monica Santamarina. Fascinating!

A quick tour of the WUCWO Facebook page is instructive. They respond to world hunger, human trafficking, the call for a synodal church, and meetings at the Vatican, as well as showcasing vibrant women’s groups from around the world. Viewing photo after photo, I keep asking, “Why don’t I know anything about this organization?”

This what the WUCWO website says about their identity: “The World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations (WUCWO) is a global network of Catholic organisations whose mission is the evangelisation and integral development of women. For more than 110 years, we have been working to promote the active and co-responsible participation of Catholic women in the Church and in society, so that they may fulfil their evangelising mission and contribute to human development.”

Reading these anecdotes you might detect a theme, and you’d be correct if you do.

Edna Hodgson, Kelsi Sheren, Linda Maddaford, and Monica Santamarina are the voices of strong women who are speaking into things our association should heed.

Some of the ways this happens are simple and practical, like registering for our annual convention. Some of them have global impacts, like the work of the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations. All of them are contributing to leadership and insight.

CHAS is an organization founded by Catholic sisters, and we work to strengthen Catholic health care. The existence of these organizations are predominantly the result of the work of women. I try not to forget that in the choices I make and the places I focus CHAS’s attention.