Arts News
Vatican partnership will assure faith focus for Canadian pilgrims
By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register![Patrizia De Libero Brown says Ornit-organized tours will allow pilgrims to meet with the local Church. Patrizia De Libero Brown says Ornit-organized tours will allow pilgrims to meet with the local Church. (Photo by Michael Swan)](/images/stories/arts/arts11/ornittours.jpg)
Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi has forged a North American partnership to offer travel services for Canadian pilgrims. Ornit, official distributor of Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi services in North America, will offer pilgrimage packages to Rome, Lourdes, Israel and Palestine, walking pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela, social justice tours of Nepal and event packages for World Youth Day and the beatification of Pope John Paul II.
Working with Opera Romana, Ornit’s tours assure a faith focus for all their pilgrimages, including daily Mass.
Vatican offers hands-on approach to art
By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service![A corner of a sarcophagus is seen in the pre-Christian and early Christian art and artifacts display at the Vatican Museums. The Museums have started special tours for the deaf and blind, offering a multi-sensory experience of some of its most famous works. (CNS file photo/Nancy Wiechec) A corner of a sarcophagus is seen in the pre-Christian and early Christian art and artifacts display at the Vatican Museums. The Museums have started special tours for the deaf and blind, offering a multi-sensory experience of some of its most famous works. (CNS file photo/Nancy Wiechec)](/images/stories/arts/arts11/vaticanart.jpg)
The two-hour tours are free to the hearing- and visually impaired and seek to offer a multi-sensory experience of some of the Museums’ most famous works.
Seven women, five of whom are deaf, received specialized training in art history and archeology at the Museums so they could work as professional guides for the new tour for the deaf.
The tour for the deaf includes stops in the Raphael Rooms, the Sistine Chapel and visits to the classical statues collection. The guides are fluent in a number of sign languages, including British and French.
Doug Barry brings the Passion to life
By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register![EWTN's Doug Barry brings his Passion performance to Pickering, Ont's Holy Redeemer Church March 19. Doug Barry](/images/stories/toronto_people/dougbarry.jpg)
The rest of the hour to hour-and-15-minute performance is an elaboration of that one, central point.
“If we do not make that connection — that this was not just an historical event that happened 2,000 years ago — then it’s easier for us to detach ourselves from our sin today,” Barry told The Catholic Register.
Out of the rubble emerges a ministry of reconciliation
By Fr. Thomas Ryan, CSP, Catholic Register Special![A sculpture in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, under which is inscribed: “In the face of destructive forces, human dignity and love will triumph over disaster and bring nations together in respect and peace.” (Photo courtesy of Fr. Thomas Ryan, CSP) Coventry Cathedral](/images/stories/arts/arts11/coventrycathedral.jpg)
On the night of Nov. 14, 1940, the German Luftwaffe devastated the city of Coventry. And as it burned, the cathedral burned with it. A total of 568 people lost their lives.
This past summer I co-led a group on a Reconciliation and Unity study pilgrimage, and Coventry, the only English city to lose its cathedral as a result of aerial bombardment, was one of the places we visited. It would not have been surprising if, following the raid, another kind of flame were to have been fanned into being — the fire of bitterness and hatred. It was largely due to the inspired, prophetic leadership of the cathedral provost at the time, Dick Howard, that a different spirit prevailed.
No conspiracy against Catholic TV, says Rosica
By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register![Fr. Tom Rosica, CEO of Salt + Light Television, saysa there is no conspiracy against CAtholic TV even though the American Eternal World Televeision Network has been dropped by Bell. (Photo by Michael Swan) Fr. Rosica](/images/stories/toronto_people/rosica.jpg)
Since news broke of Bell TV’s decision to drop the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) from its satellite offerings, Salt + Light has been bombarded with e-mails, phone calls and letters from “people who automatically jumped to conclusions that this was an all-out attack against the Church,” Rosica told The Catholic Register.
Responding to angry blog posts, many of the callers and writers seem to believe in a conspiracy against Catholics rather than a straight business decision on the part of Bell, Rosica said.
Can't find a chant choir? Well, start your own
By Vanessa Santilli-Raimondo, The Catholic Register![Surinder Mundra, musical director for the St. Patrick’s Gregorian Choir. (Photo courtesy of Surinder Mundra) Surinder Mundra](/images/stories/arts/arts11/surindermundra.jpg)
“It was backwards,” the concert pianist, piano teacher, organist and music director at both St. Patrick’s Church in Toronto and St. Georges Anglican Church in Pickering, Ont., told The Catholic Register. “I was listening to secular music in a Church. I had to leave the Church, go into my car and drive home to listen to liturgical music.”
Disillusioned by this, along with the emphasis that many parish choirs have on performance instead of spirituality, Mundra decided to start his own choir. In 2006, he founded St. Patrick’s Gregorian Choir, which specializes in Gregorian chants in its proper liturgical context. One of the only of its kind in Toronto, the choir currently has 15 members.
Bell drops EWTN from digital service
By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register
Thousands of loyal and faithful watchers of Eternal Word Television Network across Canada are losing their favourite station as Bell TV will drop EWTN from its digital satellite television service as of Feb. 27.
“EWTN had a low viewership and Salt + Light (Canada’s national Catholic television channel) is a strong alternative. This channel capacity is needed for new and high-demand channels,” said Bell spokeswoman Marie-Eve Francoeur in an e-mail to The Catholic Register.
For Toronto EWTN fan Glen Burke, the network is a big part of his TV habit.
“EWTN had a low viewership and Salt + Light (Canada’s national Catholic television channel) is a strong alternative. This channel capacity is needed for new and high-demand channels,” said Bell spokeswoman Marie-Eve Francoeur in an e-mail to The Catholic Register.
For Toronto EWTN fan Glen Burke, the network is a big part of his TV habit.
John Paul II's army was greater than the most powerful armies of his time
By Ian Hunter, Catholic Register Special![Pope John Paul II](/images/stories/historical_people/PopeJohnPaulII/JPII_Carter.jpg)
How right he was! Solzhenitsyn and John Paul ll are now both dead, but each man irrevocably altered history: Solzhenitsyn, by his heroic witness to truth amidst the freezing darkness of the Gulag Archipelago and Karol Wojtyla — “a man from a far country” as he called himself — by the 27 years of his papacy.
George Weigel, the Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington, D.C., is a leading authority on Catholic matters and the author of the definitive (and bestselling) 1999 biography: Pope John Paul ll: Witness to Hope. Weigel has now returned to this subject in The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul ll, the Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, and the Legacy (Doubleday, 2010).
Poems of Christmas
By Catholic Register StaffWe weren’t sure what to expect when we launched our Poems of Christmas contest. But three dozen readers took the time to send us rhyme, and what splendid creativity poured forth from the nativity.
Entries were received from the young and the old, and we had one wonderful entry from a 66-year-old woman who forwarded a poem written when she was 17.
Every entry stayed true to the example of Msgr. Tom Raby, the former Register columnist whose annual Christmas poem was the inspiration for this contest, by focussing on the peace and joy of the true meaning of Christmas.
A 'Joyful Noise' rocks the season
By Vanessa Santilli-Raimondo, The Catholic Register![messiah rocks](/images/stories/arts/arts10/messiah.jpg)
George Frideric Handel’s musical oratorio on the life of the Messiah has been updated, adding some modern-day flash, to produce Handel’s Messiah Rocks: A Joyful Noise. It will be performed at the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga, Dec. 16 and 17.
Young singer to debut new pro-life song
By Sarah Gagliano, Youth Speak News![Carly Taylor Carly Taylor](/images/stories/Music/carly_taylor.jpg)
“It’s actually a song that my sister wrote,” said Taylor, a Grade 11 student at Milton, Ont.’s Bishop Reding High School. “I’m very excited to sing it.”