News/Canada

{mosimage}OTTAWA - On June 1, Pope Benedict XVI made three Episcopal appointments in Canada and accepted two resignations, close on the heels of recent appointments to Ottawa, Edmonton and Saint John, N.B.

{mosimage}The St. Francis Xavier University political science professor who made headlines in 2006 by attending an Iranian conference on the Holocaust along with leading Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis has accused Antigonish’s Bishop Raymond Lahey and St. Francis Xavier University of being the “distilled voice of Canadian Islamophobia” in an essay published in the Literary Review of Canada.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - Should doctors who object to abortion on religious or conscience grounds be forced to refer patients seeking to terminate their pregnancies? Should abortion be a required procedure for all medical students?

{mosimage}TORONTO - As two 17-year-old boys prepare to face a judge over the shooting death of 15-year-old Jordan Manners in a Toronto school hallway, the ecumenical Church Council on Justice and Corrections continues its fight against mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes.

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - After more than an hour of mainline Protestant and Catholic consternation and deep thinking over the declining influence of Christians in Canada’s political life, Jeremy Bell had had enough.

{mosimage}WINDSOR, Ont. - Despite numerous predictions of its demise, religion is very much a part of the world, and perhaps more alive and vital now than it has ever been, speakers told delegates at a conference at Assumption University here May 16-18.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - Since he arrived in 1989, Ottawa Archbishop Marcel Gervais has done a deft job of maintaining unity in the bilingual diocese covering Canada’s capital where national concerns like same-sex marriage become a unique challenge.

{mosimage}One of Canada’s most outspoken Catholic bishops is going to the nation’s capital, where legislators, judges, policy makers and media will be counted among his flock.

Pope Benedict XVI appointed Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J., 63, to replace Archbishop Marcel Gervais as head of the archdiocese of Ottawa May 14. Prendergast will take possession of Ottawa’s cathedral in late June or early July. Gervais submitted his resignation when he turned 75 last September, as required by canon law.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - Concern for human rights and the growing use of abortion for sex selection dominated the annual March for Life May 10.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Sometimes religious people are the biggest reason why their opinions get short shrift in public debates on controversial issues, says Preston Manning, an Evangelical Christian and former leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons.