Arts News

VATICAN CITY - A new kind of ghetto needs the church's presence and people's solidarity: the "digital slum" where cyberbullying and online pornography and abuse run rampant, said speakers at a Vatican news conference.

The third and most ambitious staging yet of playwright Adam Seybold’s play The De Chardin Project begins with an image of sin. Fr. Teilhard De Chardin, played by Cyrus Lane, wakes up on a bare, black stage beside a broken tea cup. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got there and he can make out nothing of his surroundings except the broken china.

On a trip to Italy 11 months ago Catholic artist Timothy Schmalz discovered the nation’s love for St. Padre Pio. Creator of the acclaimed Jesus the Homeless sculpture, Schmalz was soon inspired to create a work of art to honour the Italian saint.

WINNIPEG - Carmela Finkel remembers feeling terrified.

Although evangelical moviemakers have been in the spotlight lately with features such as Son of God and God’s Not Dead, at least one other prominent, mainstream director is also turning — or returning — to religion.

TORONTO - Media guru Fr. John Pungente, S.J., has been fighting media illiteracy for half-a-century, and for his work the Marshall McLuhan Initiative has awarded Pungente and the Jesuit Communication Project the fourth annual Medium and Light Award for significantly contributing to religious communication.

SASKATOON - Toronto artist Sarah Hall was in Saskatoon as her latest work, housed in the Queen of Peace Chapel at the Cathedral of the Holy Family, was blessed by Bishop Donald Bolen. 

TORONTO - A smoky stage and the distinct scent of incense set the scene for the Vatican in 1978. It’s a place where “everything is confidential and nothing is secret,” according to the sharp-witted play The Last Confession.

CBC budget cuts in April that will cost more than 600 employees their jobs left the weekly Mass in French relatively unscathed.

When Canada’s Catholic bishops last year spoke out yet again on the environment they were hoping they wouldn’t have the last word on the subject. Now a Catholic video production company along with several parishes and religious orders are hoping to get Catholic students and parishioners talking with the launch of Green Spirit TV.