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June 27, 2008
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - July 12 and 13 will mark the first Mass celebrations for St. Josephine Bakhita parish, the newest parish in the archdiocese of Toronto, at the western limits of Mississauga. Founding pastor Fr. Mark Achilles Villanueva said he is excited to see the Christian community develop under the name of the Sudanese saint.
TORONTO - Toronto’s Catholics have helped send more than $1 million to aid victims of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and earthquakes in China’s Sichuan province.
I have just returned from the 49th International Eucharistic Congress, having travelled with about 500 other pilgrims from the archdiocese of Toronto. It was a pilgrimage of a life time, and I can simply say that my cup is overflowing.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - When chaplain Jim McLeavy set out to plan St. Joan of Arc Catholic Secondary School’s first mission trip, he chose an unconventional location. Eleven students and four staff members at the Mississauga school set out in May with McLeavy for a nine-day project in the Yukon Territory at Braeburn Lake Christian Camp, 87 km north of Whitehorse.
TORONTO - A non-profit group of Toronto-based religious sisters is looking to fill more than a dozen spots for its long-awaited and controversial affordable housing project. There are 17 spots left for the project being run by 40 Toronto-based women religious congregations that is expected to be ready for occupancy next spring.
TORONTO - Recalling the story of how Jesus’ family was forced into exile in Egypt (Mat. 2:13-23) refugees and the volunteers who support them sang “Jesus was a refugee” at an ecumenical prayer service on the eve of World Refugee Day in Trinity-St. Paul United Church in downtown Toronto. Refugees from every continent were represented at the June 19 event. Actors recruited from FCJ Hamilton House — a transitional home for women refugees run by the Sisters of the Faithful Companions of Jesus — portrayed life in a refugee camp and related their experience to the Bible in God Sees the Refugee, a play by Sonya VanderVeen Feddema.
June 28, 2008
TORONTO - The founding executive director of Project Ploughshares — one of Canada’s leading Christian voices for peace — wants Canadian troops to stay in Afghanistan, for now. Following 10 days interviewing Afghanis and Canadians in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, Project Ploughshares senior researcher Ernie Regehr concludes Canadian troops are not creating the peace and stability necessary for economic and social development in Kandahar province. However, the soldiers are still necessary to prevent an all-out civil war.
June 29, 2008
OTTAWA - An Alberta Human Rights Commission panel has ordered a former Christian youth pastor to apologize in the pages of the Red Deer Advocate for a strongly worded 2002 letter to the editor he wrote opposing the homosexual activist agenda. In a May 30 “decision on remedy,” commission panelist Lori Andreachuk also ordered Stephen Boissoin, 41, to request the newspaper publish her judgment against him. She has also imposed a lifetime ban on ever speaking or writing “disparagingly” about homosexuals again: in the media, on the Internet, in public speaking engagements or in e-mails. She has also ordered him to take down any “disparaging” remarks from his web site.