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March 21, 2015
Over the next two years Ann Hawkins hopes to use her position as the new Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association’s (OECTA) president to build relationships and protect the Catholic classroom.
This summer children at Camp Vincent can cast off the shackles of life and spend a week living as superheroes.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Bishop Launay Saturne of Jacmel has a simple vision that he believes could change the future of Haiti.
OTTAWA - The Conservative government is pressing ahead with its controversial Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, Bill S-7, voting March 12 to limit the time for debate.
March 22, 2015
In 1964, when Jean Vanier quietly launched L’Arche, he says he had “no idea that this would be a revolutionary reality . . . that it would grow.”
JOHNSTOWN, N.S. - The people of Potlotek First Nation say an ornate wooden altar stored at the nearby Sacred Heart Catholic Church was a gift to the Mi’kmaq nearly 300 years ago, and they want it back.
VAUGHAN, ONT. - About 100 Pakistani Christians and supporters held a peaceful demonstration outside the Pakistani Consulate north of Toronto on Mar. 20 in response to the deadly bombing four days earlier of two churches in Lahore, Pakistan.
March 23, 2015
Four years into Syria’s civil war, Canada’s Catholic development agency is petitioning Ottawa for more aid, Canadian diplomatic contributions to a peace plan and stronger efforts to choke off the money that keeps both the Assad regime and ISIS fighting.
VATICAN CITY - Hope is the first act of resistance to evil, Pope Francis told the people of Naples as he pleaded for respect for the dignity of immigrants, jobs for the unemployed and the conversion of the city's notorious mafia families.
VATICAN CITY - After Pope Francis was mobbed by a group of cloistered nuns, and at the end of a spontaneity-filled meeting with priests, seminarians and religious in the cathedral of Naples, a vial of dried blood of the city's patron saint appeared to miraculously liquefy.
The first legal challenge to a policy that would force Ontario doctors to refer for abortions against their conscience has been announced by the Christian Medical and Dental Society.
March 24, 2015
LAGOS, Nigeria - A delegation representing Catholic organizations in Nigeria offered words of comfort and pledged help for Nigerian refugees who fled to neighbouring Cameroon because of a violent insurgency.
VATICAN CITY - Don't be "halfway Christians," who accept Christ, but then start looking for excuses and stammering, "yes, but ..." when it is time to follow his way, Pope Francis said at a morning Mass.
“Bless you for playing Jesus, peace be upon him.”
MONTREAL - A Catholic deacon who was arrested with more than 100,000 pornographic pictures of children was sentenced Mar. 24 to two years less a day in prison.
After seven months of refusing to meet face-to-face with the affected doctors, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario will now face them in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
March 25, 2015
Catholic bishops and religious orders from the high arctic to the southern tip of Patagonia are demanding accountability for Canadian mining companies operating in Latin America up to and including the right of villagers and farmers to sue in Canadian courts in the event of environmental disasters and human rights abuses.
CANTERBURY, England - Tens of thousands of people in Leicester — England’s most religiously diverse city — are getting ready to honour the memory of a long-despised English king with a ceremony that testifies to the already warm relationship between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.
March 26, 2015
There’s a wonderful scene in that poignant and delightfully sharp movie Mean Girls where the then-compelling Lindsay Lohan explains that her homeschooling wasn’t of the ultra-religious variety. The scene cuts to a group of toothless youths on a farm who say proudly, “And on the third day God gave us the Remington rifle, so we could fight the dinosaurs. And the homosexuals. Amen.”
Several years ago, Mel Gibson produced and directed a movie which enjoyed a spectacular popularity. Entitled The Passion of the Christ, the movie depicts Jesus’ paschal journey from the Garden of Gethsemane to His death on Golgotha, but with a very heavy emphasis on his physical suffering. The movie shows in graphic detail what someone who was being crucified might have had to endure in terms of being physically beaten, tortured and humiliated.