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April 2010

April 20

Family caught in Lebanese limbo

April 20, 2010

David and Eliot Kakos [images/stories/features/iraqExodus/deathThreat.jpg]The Army of the Murabi Islamic Iraq State doesn’t like what Fuad Benan Kakos did for a living, and if they ever catch him they’re going to kill him. They gave him and his family a three-day head start. Fuad, Jacqueline and their sons David and Eliot have been in Beirut just over a year. The family had lived in the Christian neighbourhood of Zafaraniyya in Baghdad. Fuad made a modest living running a shop that had a dangerous sideline: under-the-counter liquor sales — legal for Christians under Iraqi law, but dangerous if the mujahedeen find out.

12 per cent of world's refugees from Iraq

April 20, 2010

Iraqi Refugees map [images/stories/features/iraqExodus/iraqMapRefugee.jpg]There are some 16 million refugees in the world, and another 26 million internally displaced people — people who haven’t crossed a border but still can’t go home. Of the total, Iraq accounts for 1.9 million or 12 per cent of the world’s refugees, to say nothing of 2.6 million internally displaced Iraqis.

Little miracles make up Martin Mark's ministry of hope

April 20, 2010

Martin Mark [images/stories/features/iraqExodus/Martin.jpg]TORONTO - Martin Mark knows from experience how hard it is to start a new life in an adopted homeland. That’s why the director for the Office for Refugees of the Archdiocese of Toronto (ORAT) is passionate about helping refugees successfully settle in Canada. Ten years ago Mark was a refugee. He was welcomed into Canada after fleeing his native Hungary, where he had become a target of factions who resented his work on behalf of victims of racism.

More efficiency needed for Iraqi refugee resettlement

April 20, 2010

Canada Iraqi immigration [images/stories/features/iraqExodus/CanadaIraqiMap.jpg]Canada is either the number two or number three country after the United States in terms of taking on Iraqi refugees, depending on how we measure it. From 2007 to 2009 the UNHCR in Syria submitted 3,280 applications from verified Iraqi refugees for resettlement in Canada. That’s second to the 27,406 who were submitted for resettlement in the United States.

Archdiocese of Toronto Office for Refugees after 15 short months

April 20, 2010

Orat refugees [images/stories/features/iraqExodus/P_Family2.jpg]TORONTO - Helping refugees is a prime example of what it means to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” says Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, and through the archdiocese’s Office for Refugees (ORAT) Catholics have been able to follow Christ’s example in caring for others. “It is a tremendous blessing to have the Office for Refugees working in our archdiocese,” Archbishop Thomas Collins said in a written statement. “We have seen countless examples of our parishes embracing strangers from foreign lands and journeying with them as they begin life in a new country and community.”

Mississauga parish helps families adjust to a new life

April 20, 2010

St. Dominic’s Church’s Resettlement [images/stories/features/iraqExodus/StDominicFamily.jpg]Mississauga, ON. - In Iraq, they lived under the threat of bombs and bullets. In Canada, Fawaz Fatohi says his daughter Dana is free to play in the park as any five-year-old should. Fatohi’s family was sponsored last year by St. Dominic’s parish in Mississauga, Ont. They had been living as refugees in Syria after fleeing Iraq. St. Dominic’s parishioners say helping refugee families come to Canada is just part of who they are as a faith community. The experience, from both sides, has been rewarding.

A stranger in a strange land appreciates the peace it brings

April 20, 2010

Iraq Canada [images/stories/features/iraqExodus/IraqButtonCanada.jpg]Forced to flee from Iraq, a refugee recounted to Catholic Register editor Jim O’Leary the story of his family’s flight to Syria and start of new life in a Toronto suburb. Along with his wife, two daughters and mother-in-law, he arrived in 2009 after being sponsored by a Toronto-area parish. To protect his children’s privacy, he requested his name be withheld. Our family is blessed to be in Canada. We have received wonderful support and we hope some day we can pay everyone back. In Baghdad, our situation became dangerous when the American war started in 2003. There were tanks in the streets and bombs and fighting.

Deborah Amos no longer recognizes Middle East she has known since 1983

April 20, 2010

Deborah Amos [images/stories/features/iraqExodus/amosDebcShannonTaggart.jpg]The biggest and best story of Deborah Amos’s 28-year career as a Middle East correspondent comes in the form of an eminently readable, fast-paced book about the Iraqi refugee crisis — Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile and Upheaval in the Middle East. Amos spent five years among Iraq’s two million exiles, sipping tea with them in tiny, crumbling, empty apartments in the poor Geramana neighbourhood of Damascus, retracing their journeys from Baghdad by taxi, tracking them down after they resettled in the United States. Out of the whirlwind of “shock and awe” attacks on Baghdad in 2003, and the confusing rhetoric about weapons of mass destruction and regime change and democratizing the Middle East, Amos discovered that the key to understanding what was happening in Iraq was in the people streaming out of Iraq.

Iraqi refugees prisoners in their Christian locales

April 20, 2010

Anwer Salem [images/stories/features/iraqExodus/Aytiryya.jpg]The 10,000-plus Iraqis in Lebanon have no legal status. Lebanon never signed the United Nations Convention on Refugees. The country has no legal or administrative mechanism to deal with a person seeking asylum of any kind. While it does recognize Palestinian refugees, they are an exception. The police are not actively trying to round up refugees and put them in jail or send them out of the country. As long as they don’t wander out of the Christian neighbourhoods of Beirut or otherwise draw attention, authorities are willing to pretend they’re not there.

A lens in the labyrinth of the refugee slums

April 20, 2010

Refugee Children [images/stories/features/iraqExodus/refugeeChildren.jpg]Take a look at Za Aytiryya, the neighbourhood where Iraqi Christian refugees live in Beirut. Or take a tour the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus for a glimpse of a Muslim world. Or meet the child refugees whose lives are also on hold, waiting for resettlement. These three slide shows give another view of the shrinking world of Iraqi refugees.

April 21

Conservatives won't support abortion coercion bill

April 21, 2010

Rod Bruinooge [images/stories/canada/canada10/Bruinooge.jpg]OTTAWA - The Conservative government will not support MP Rod Bruinooge’s bill to prevent women from being coerced into having abortions, giving the private member’s bill little chance of passing. The Winnipeg South MP, who chairs the all-party Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, introduced Bill C-510 into the House of Commons April 14. The Conservative backbencher told journalists the next day he had support from members of other parties as well as from within Tory ranks.

April 22

Euthanasia bill defeated in House of Commons

April 22, 2010

Euthanasia [images/stories/misc/euthanasia.jpg]OTTAWA - Canada’s MPs have overwhelmingly rejected assisted suicide and euthanasia. Bloc Quebecois MP ’s private member’s Bill C-384 went down to a resounding defeat April 21 by a vote of 228 to 59. All save one Bloc Quebecois MP supported the motion, while all the Conservatives present, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, voted against it. Most Liberals and NDP MPs also voted against the bill, including NDP Leader Jack Layton. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff was not in the House for the vote, but told journalists earlier in the day he did not support it.

Facts, balance missing in media coverage of abuse scandal

April 22, 2010

It takes a real New Yorker to speak the truth. Former Mayor Ed Koch, a Conservative Jew, wrote recently: “I believe the continuing attacks by the media on the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI have become manifestations of anti-Catholicism.”

Our reverence for priests should not be blind

April 22, 2010

How old were you when you discovered priests weren’t perfect? I was six. Our pastor habitually cut his sermon short, or omitted it completely, when he wanted Mass to end quickly so he could watch important CFL games. By age six I knew that Father thought a Toronto Argonauts game was more important than his homily, and that our great rivals were the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. But I also knew that Father’s priorities were whacked. Even at six I knew that understanding the Gospel was more important than watching sports on TV.

April 23

Ontario bishops pleased with McGuinty's about-face on sex ed curriculum

April 23, 2010

Sex Education [images/stories/education/education10/SexEducation.jpg]TORONTO - The Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario has welcomed Premier Dalton McGuinty''s decision to rethink a controversial sex ed curriculum for elementary school students. “We certainly welcome this new round of consultations and the Catholic community will offer its input. We will continue working with the Ministry of Education as we always have,” Lou Piovesan, the Assembly's general secretary, told The Catholic Register.

Zero tolerance of abuse offenders

April 23, 2010

abuse [images/stories/misc/abuse.jpg]Catholics are angry about recent revelations of clerical sexual abuse for two reasons: crimes were committed against children by men ordained as priests and, in many cases over many years, bishops refused to protect children from known predators by removing abuser priests from ministry and calling in the police The Vatican apparently understands why sexual abuse of children ignites such intense anger. But it seemingly struggles to comprehend why Catholics are so angry about crimes committed and covered up 20, 30 years ago. In recent years, after all, under then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and now Pope Benedict XVI, the Church has enacted tougher protocols to empower bishops and involve police when crimes are suspected. Yet anger persists.

Pope promises action on abuse

April 23, 2010

Pope Malta [images/stories/PopeBenedictXVI/popeBenedict2.jpg]VATICAN CITY - Three days after promising sex-abuse victims in Malta that he would do all he could to bring offenders to justice, Pope Benedict XVI told a Vatican audience that he “assured” the Maltese men of “Church action” to address priestly sexual abuse. In a rare public statement April 21 on the sex-abuse scandal, Benedict recounted his meeting with eight Maltese men who were molested as children by priests. “I shared their suffering and emotionally prayed with them,” the Pope told pilgrims and tourists during his weekly public audience at St. Peter’s Square.

Toronto to review abuse protocols

April 23, 2010

Archbishop Collins [images/stories/canada_bishops/collins_atDesk.jpg]TORONTO - In the wake of the abuse scandal rocking the worldwide Church, Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins will convene a committee of experts to examine and update the archdiocese’s protocols for dealing with priestly misconduct. Collins made the announcement in a pastoral letter read at Masses in parishes throughout the archdiocese the weekend of April 17-18.

Hope running out for Iraqi Christians

April 23, 2010

Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J. [images/stories/canada_bishops/prendergast08.jpg]Time is running out on people’s hopes for a tolerant Middle East where the Christian minorities can live in peace, said Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J., on returning from a trip to Lebanon and Syria. “We have to create a climate now for the Christians to stay, for the Christians to go back to Iraq and go back to the villages in Galilee. That’s the hope,” said Prendergast.

Music a big part of Fr. Robbie McDougall's ministry

April 23, 2010

Fr. Robbie McDougall [images/stories/Music/frMcdougall.jpg]While attending Mass at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto nearly 40 years ago, a renowned concert pianist discovered how he could better use his musical talents for God. Thirteen years later he would be ordained to the priesthood and for the past 21 years has been leading scores of people across Canada in retreats, parish missions, workshops and Christian concerts. Fr. Robbie McDougall is a priest based in the Manitoba archdiocese of St. Boniface. He founded a ministry more than 20 years ago to combine his love for sacred music and evangelization.