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August 2011

August 31

Tories honoured for promoting religious freedom

August 31, 2011

MISSISSAUGA, ONT. - International Christian Voice is hosting a dinner Sept. 9 in Mississauga to thank Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government for their work in promoting religious freedom internationally. The Toronto-based human rights organization is run by Peter Bhatti, the brother of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Pakistani minorities minister and Christian who was assassinated last March after speaking out against the country’s blasphemy laws. “The Conservative government has made an announcement of an international religious freedom office (the Office of Religious Freedom) and they’re trying to promote religion internationally, so we want to thank them,” said Bhatti. “When my brother was murdered, (Immigration Minister) Jason Kenney attended his funeral… and gave him tribute. And before, nobody was even talking about religious freedom. But now, Stephen Harper has made an announcement that they would open a new office with the focus internationally on religious freedom and that makes us very hopeful.”

The bitter aftertaste of the Cuatro Vientos lockout

August 31, 2011

Alan Law wanted to know why the gates were closed so early at Cuatro Vientos air base on the eve of the papal vigil at World Youth Day. So he posed this question on the wall for the official World Youth Day Facebook group, run by event organizers. “Why were the gates closed so early? A lot of people were locked out,” wrote Law, who is a product development manager with Tour Design, a travel company that brought many Canadian pilgrims to Madrid. He waited for a response but heard nothing. So the next day, he checked again. To his shock, he couldn’t find his comment. It had been erased. As group leaders and pilgrims settle back home after World Youth Day, discontent at the fact that an estimated 250,000 pilgrims were locked out of Cuatro Vientos airbase for the overnight vigil and closing Mass is starting to be vocalized. Some 1.4 million pilgrims showed up for the overnight vigil and World Youth Day organizers were only equipped to handle about a million, turning away registered pilgrims from around the world.

Embracing her cross at World Youth Day

August 31, 2011

Michelle Walsh [images/stories/ysn/ysn10/michelle_walsh.jpg]If it were up to me, Madrid would not have been my first choice for World Youth Day. Unlike most people, I am not a fan of the heat. In fact, I am slightly heat intolerant. When I found out I would be taking this pilgrimage, I knew it would be a challenge and that God would somehow use this trip to teach me how to take up and embrace my daily cross. God took His first opportunity during the opening Mass when I began to get overheated, weak and overwhelmed by the crowd. Nearly fainting from heat exhaustion, all I could do was pray the words, “Jesus help me, Mary protect me.” After my group fought its way through the crowd, we found refuge in an air-conditioned restaurant where others nursed me back to health with the help of some pilgrims from Ireland. Throughout my sufferings, God gave me the grace and strength to rejoice amidst the chaos and offer up my weakness for the conversion of the youth at World Youth Day. I was inspired by the way my friends and fellow Catholics came together to help me and I found myself thanking God for allowing me to be a victim — something I had never been able to do before.

Sherlock saddened by how disease ravaged cardinal

August 31, 2011

The last time Bishop John Sherlock saw his old friend Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic there were tears in Sherlock’s eyes. “The devastation of that Parkinson’s (like disease) had set in,” recalled London’s bishop emeritus. “I remember being overwhelmed with sadness. I remember I came out of his room and I broke into tears.” Cardinal Ambrozic was a scholar who spoke English, French, Italian and German, read Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, all in addition to his native Slovenian. It was painful for Sherlock to think of the cardinal imprisoned by a disease, unable to communicate. “His life must have been pretty miserable. He was a voracious reader and I presume even that was stripped away. He was a great communicator and that was taken away,” said Sherlock. Sherlock prayed for Cardinal Ambrozic by name every day over the last two years. He directed his prayers to Blessed John Paul II, who had also suffered through Parkinson’s.