May 20, 2015
TORONTO - It’s taken six years and $12.6 million in legal fees, but El Salvador expects to learn before the end of this year whether it has to pay $301 million to a shell company whose sole purpose since 2009 has been to extract money from the country for a mine that never got built.
For the first time in 20 years six- and seven-year-olds are getting new religion textbooks, their teachers are getting new lesson plans and parents are getting new ways of helping kids in religion class.
May 19, 2015
The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace has so far collected $600,800 for relief efforts in Nepal. The development arm of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs Trade and Development will match all funds collected by May 25.
May 18, 2015
While Philippines President Benigno Aquino III was in Ottawa signing a May 8 agreement to govern how more than $90 million in Canadian aid is spent, the Canadian bishops’ development agency was holding community meetings in the Philippines trying to ensure local people get new permanent homes close to their jobs, family and community.
May 17, 2015
Encyclicals are important for Catholics. Our theologians study them. Our pastors preach them. Sometimes we even read them. But there has never been an encyclical like the yet-to-be published papal letter on the environment and climate change due out next month. Even the editorial board of The New York Times is waiting with baited breath. “The Pope is right to speak up for our planet, and the greater the impact the better,” the newspaper wrote in its April 29 editorial.
TORONTO - The biggest theological conference in Toronto since 1967 brought more than 200 scholars to the University of St. Michael’s College to look at the same subject theologians were wondering about then — the Second Vatican Council.
May 10, 2015
Motherhood statements are rarely welcomed. They are too obvious and can’t be disagreed with. They add nothing to the conversation. A motherhood statement just repeats what we already know.
May 9, 2015
TORONTO - More than 12,000 times, people in Toronto slept on a vinyl-covered foam mattress on the floor of a church, synagogue or mosque this past winter.
TORONTO - A simple idea that has helped hundreds of women who face domestic violence and abuse is down to its last few weeks unless Ontario’s provincial government comes up with $70,000 per year to keep it going.
May 8, 2015
The April 25 earthquake that killed more than 8,000 and left close to 15,000 injured was bad, but “it could have been terribly, terribly worse,” said Canadian Jesuit Father Bill Robins.