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April 5, 2015
TORONTO - For years, students at St. Agatha Catholic School have gotten by with “archaic laptop” computers. But they’ve received a $25,000 surprise that will soon get them plugged into modern technology.
When you get to your 800th birthday there’s more than a cake involved. The 800th anniversary of the Dominican order will call the “Hounds of the Lord” (Domini Canes in Latin) to Toronto to study, pray and preach.
Canadians are increasingly becoming ambivalent about religion or rejecting it outright, but people across the religion spectrum admire the Pope, according to an Angus Reid Institute study released before Easter.
Already battle scarred in conflict with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario over the college’s insistence that doctors must actively help patients access abortion, morning-after pills, chemical contraception, hysterectomies and vasectomies, Dr. Agnes Tanguay is not backing away from a fight for her right to practise medicine according to her conscience.
The politics of prayer and the prayers of politics are being marshalled at Queen’s Park in advance of Ontario’s 2015 budget.
VATICAN CITY - To enter Christ's empty tomb like the disciples and see that he has risen, Christians today also must "bend down," Pope Francis said in his Easter message.
April 6, 2015
JERUSALEM - Christians in the Middle East are called to help the light of peace emerge from the violence and anguish of war in much of the region, drawing inspiration from the resurrected Jesus, Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal said in his Easter homily.
VATICAN CITY - Christians live the joy of the Resurrection when they share a smile with someone, weep with those who mourn and defend the rights of those persecuted for their faith, Pope Francis said.
April 7, 2015
NAIROBI, Kenya - The president of the Kenyan bishops' conference called on Easter worshippers to commit themselves to praying for peace and security in their homeland after militants attacked a college campus days earlier.
YON, France - Sunlight slants across a classroom at the Catholic University of Lyon, where the Bible dominates an evening lecture.
BOSTON - As the trial of Boston Marathon bombing defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev went to the jury April 6, the Catholic bishops of Massachusetts released a statement reiterating the church's teaching on the death penalty.
MANILA, Philippines - A Philippine cardinal has pooled a team of peace advocates to help push legislation that would see the creation of an autonomous region in the Muslim-majority section of Mindanao Island.
April 8, 2015
MONTREAL - Montreal's cardinal of the people, Archbishop Emeritus Jean-Claude Turcotte, is dead. The popular cardinal, who served as Montreal's archbishop for 22 years, died April 8 in Montreal’s Marie-Clarac Hospital.
TORONTO - Catholic school trustee Angela Kennedy is accusing some Toronto politicians of conducting “a smear campaign against Catholics.”
Students at Ontario’s Catholic high schools are graduating at a significantly higher rate than those at public schools, according to data released by the Ministry of Education.
OTTAWA - MP James Lunney quit the Conservative caucus March 31 to sit as an independent so he could better defend the religious freedom of Christians facing mounting attacks and ridicule in Canada.
AMMAN, Jordan - A call for an area to protect Christians and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq is gathering pace even as April marks the centenary of the 1915 genocide of Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christians.
April 9, 2015
I live on 86 of the last few hundred acres of countryside separating Edinburgh from the next town over. My home is owned by the National Trust for Scotland, so it is safe from field-munching developers. Sadly, it may soon be the only greenery in an encroaching desert of urban sprawl. For the time being, however, the meadows beyond our garden walls flourish, populated still by goldfinches and bunny rabbits.
Eternity has more kinds of rooms than this world does. This is a thought inside the head of Marilynne Robinson’s fictional character, Lila, in Robinson’s recent novel. Lila has reason to think that way, that is, to think outside the box of conventional religious piety because her story is not one that fits piety of any kind.
I drove to Indiana last year for a speech. Long drive but good people and a nice state. So what happened recently with their legislation supposedly based on protecting freedom of religion was rather shocking. Flummery and packaging aside, the heart of the bill was about allowing Christians to refuse to provide work or support to same-sex weddings. In other words, a Christian — and it’s not yet been an issue for orthodox Muslims, Jews or anyone else — can refuse to cater, sell a dress, take photographs if the event is the marriage of two people of the same gender. So it’s a law to allow discrimination.