Dear Readers,

{mosimage}Among Pope Benedict’s many thought-provoking speeches during his spring visit to the United States was a particularly important one on Catholic education. Though it received some coverage, the Pope’s insights into the role of Catholic schools were too often lost among the attention given to the most visual and spectacular aspects of his visit.

{mosimage}A Catholic high school in which every student has lost at least one parent to AIDS has turned the sod on a new permanent home on the edge of Africa’s second largest slum.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - The threat to the existence of publicly funded Catholic schools in Ontario is a symptom of an even greater and growing hostility to religion in the public square, warns Bishop Paul-André Durocher.

“If we want to save our Catholic schools, what we have to save is the place of religion in Canadian society,” the bishop of Alexandria-Cornwall diocese said Sept. 28.

{mosimage}Parishes across Ontario are being invited to support Catholic Education Week by getting involved with school activities, reflecting on the significant contribution made to the church and to society by Catholic education and by participating in prayer celebrations being held across the province.

The week of May 3-9 has been designated as Catholic Education Week in Ontario, but the celebration extends beyond classrooms. Parishes are being asked to include a notice in Sunday bulletins to invite parishioners to become involved.

CALGARY - Just five months after trespassing charges were stayed for members of a pro-life club at the University of Calgary, eight student members are now facing charges of non-academic misconduct.

The charges resulted from a Genocide Awareness Project display the group hosted April 8 and 9. Its display, which compares abortion to atrocities such as the Rwandan genocide and the Holocaust, had been hosted without incident eight times since 2006. On April 8, campus security allegedly asked the students to turn their signs inward or leave the campus grounds. They refused.

{mosimage}TORONTO - You can count on the sisters, especially if you’re studying theology with the Jesuits in Toronto.

{mosimage}TORONTO - What was St. Ignatius of Loyola talking about in the 16th century, and why does it matter now?

TORONTO - Universities are at the centre of Catholic life, says Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, and that is why the Catholic Church began to create universities in the Middle Ages.

{mosimage} TORONTO — One of the pioneers of post-Vatican II church engagement with the political, founder of the Centre of Concern in Washington, former provincial of the Canadian Jesuits and one-time general secretary of the Canadian  Conference of Catholic Bishops will deliver the Regis College Chancellor’s Lecture Nov. 22.

{mosimage} WATERLOO, Ont. - New leadership has been officially installed at St. Jerome’s University, a Catholic liberal arts college federated with the University of Waterloo.