Michael Swan

Canadian Jesuit named expert for African Synod

September 11, 2009

A Canadian Jesuit based in Nairobi, Kenya, has been appointed one of about 30 experts who will assist bishops at Synod of Bishops for Africa at the Vatican Oct. 4-25. Fr. Michael Czerny founded the African Jesuit AIDS Network in 2002 as a way to help Jesuits in Africa work on the problem of AIDS. His appointment as “adiutor secretarii specialis” to the second Synod of Bishops on Africa will require him to step away from running AJAN at least temporarily.

Canadian Council of Churches wades into U.S. health care debate

September 9, 2009

The Canadian Council of Churches launched a letter into the shark tank of American debate over health care and saw some surprising ripples on the surface. The Aug. 10 letter to the National Council of Churches, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals became the starting point for journalist David Waters' Aug. 29 "Under God" column in The Washington Post.

97 Greater Toronto Area students granted a Hope for Children Foundation scholarship

September 8, 2009

TORONTO - For most kids, foster care is no joy ride to a brighter future. “There’s so much else going on in your life. There’s the reasons you went into care in the first place,” points out 18-year-old Nevena Seke. This year Seke is one of 97 Greater Toronto Area students granted a Hope for Children Foundation scholarship to help launch her post-secondary education. This year the foundation which supports Catholic Children’s Aid of Toronto handed out $180,000 in scholarship money.

New Regis College aims to anticipate God's glory

September 8, 2009

TORONTO - The new Regis College won’t be finished when theology students arrive for academic orientation Sept. 10, and even when construction wraps up before the end of September the academic home of the Jesuits won’t really be finished. However, Regis Dean Fr. Gordon Rixon couldn’t be happier. Weaving among the trucks in the driveway as he emerges from the dust and occasional thump of construction crews, Rixon is as calm and contented as a monk in a garden.

Toronto parishes put words into action for refugees

September 4, 2009

TORONTO - With four months to go in 2009, Toronto parishes and religious orders have welcomed 45 per cent more refugees than they did in all of 2006. There will be five more landing in Toronto the second week of September. The 53 refugees welcomed in the first eight months of 2009, the 72 sponsorship applications submitted to Citizenship and Immigration Canada , the 37 parishes and six religious orders actively sponsoring refugees are just numbers. Every number masks a story.

Woodbridge parish shows its colours in tornado aftermath

August 30, 2009

WOODBRODGE, Ont. - Tornados ripped through houses, tore chunks of roof off St. Peter's Catholic Elementary School, heaved the school's air conditioning unit into a ravine, tossed a Chevy up against an electrical transformer in front of the school, spread roofing nails and glass over streets like confetti — but the crazy storm of Aug. 20 hasn't harmed the spirit of St. Peter's parish in Woodbridge. It's not that St. Peter's isn't hard at work cleaning up the mess. Thirty-six of the most severely damaged homes plus the school are within parish boundaries. Twenty-six of those wrecked houses are the homes of registered St. Peter's parishioners.

Linden MacIntyre's Christian soldier slogs on

August 25, 2009

The priest as a hardworking assassin just doing his job, eliminating child abusers and perverts from the priestly ranks, is not a very likely starting point for a serious novel about a man in middle age struggling with meaning in his life. Award-winning CBC journalist Linden MacIntyre makes it work in The Bishop’s Man . It’s been 21 years since the Mount Cashel Orphanage scandal erupted — the first of a long series of awful stories about sexual and physical abuse of minors by Catholic priests and vowed religious. While David Harris’s Unholy Orders: Tragedy at Mount Cashel did the journalistic job back in 1991, it has taken this long to get a thoughtful treatment of the post-scandal church in a novel.

PhD at pulpit treasures the Word

August 25, 2009

MARKHAM, Ont. - Probably every Catholic knows what bad preaching feels like — all the perplexing, irrelevant, boringness that comprises the whole tortuous experience. Deacon Peter Lovrick encountered what might be the deep mystery of bad preaching when he met a priest finishing his third year of priesthood in Taiwan years ago. “He told me, ‘Oh thank goodness! Now I don’t have to write any more homilies,’ ” recalls Lovrick, who serves at St. Patrick's parish in Markham. “He had simply stored all of them on a computer and he planned to reuse them. The one-size-fits-all homily which is completely independent of space and time and groups of people and what is happening in the world — if I were to go out on a limb and talk about good preaching and bad preaching — I would say that’s not good preaching.”

Twitter time for church

August 25, 2009

If you haven’t heard a tweet out of Canada’s Catholic hierarchy, keep listening — and surfing. Catholic twittering is coming. As the world witnessed a revolution on the streets of Tehran that was fueled and organized on Twitter and Facebook , the church in Canada was appraising the new technology. This fall, the National Standing Committee for Communications of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops will seriously examine how the Canadian church can be present on these types of social media Internet-based services that rely on users to generate content, promised committee secretary Gerald Baril.

Toronto marks Hiroshima Day

August 25, 2009

TORONTO - It’s been 25 years since Pope John Paul II lit the eternal flame in Toronto’s Peace Garden, and every year the city’s Hiroshima Day Coalition magnifies that flame of hope and memory with an Aug. 6 commemoration of the first atom bomb used in war. This year’s ceremony featured a Japanese lantern ceremony, which floated dozens of paper lanterns — each containing a single tea light lit from the eternal flame — across the water of the reflecting pool at Nathan Phillips Square.